Batman, milkshakes, and doing our best to stand with our friends

That miserable phone call

I’ll never forget sitting on the third floor of the VCU library in the middle of the night — it was toward the end of my senior year of high school and I was researching for my senior project — and also trying to feel cool being in a college library (what I wasn’t realizing was that I was in a library…). April 16th, 2007 — my phone started buzzing. It was something like the third time she had called, so I answered.

They can’t find her. she talked to her parents this morning but they can’t find her now,said my friend.

Milkshakes in the dark

I went home and my brain stopped thinking for a long while. A girl who I had once been close friends with had been killed at Virginia Tech. She was a freshman. We hadn’t talked in a few years — but darkness set in nonetheless — and I tried to understand what happened and why it happened over a lot of Oreo milkshakes and conversation with the great teachers at my school. I woke up the following morning in tears and my mom, for the first time ever, asked me if I wanted to skip school. For the first time ever, all I wanted was to just go to school and pretend like it was a normal day.

Even as a kid, I knew, the darkness and grief over many people much more closely affected than me had to be unimaginable.

Where is God in the night sky?
Where is God in the city light?
Where is God in the earthquake?
Where is God in the genocide?

Our last light has gone out

This is not how it’s supposed to be. We shout, where is God? in the midst of infinite darkness — he is suffering with those who suffered and he is mourning those who are left hurt as a result. Our first sign of His solidarity is the cross — and our first sign of a light is His resurrection.

We love the story of Batman because he’s a champion of hope in a world whose last light has gone out. We want that for our world. The tragedy in Aurora (and at Virginia Tech, and on 9/11, and at Columbine High School…) is an indicator that the world is all wrong — that this is not how it’s supposed to be.

Standing beside them

We have an obligation and an opportunity to stand beside our friends who’ve been thrown into hurt and suffering as a result of this. It’s evil and wrong and it is not how it is supposed to be, which makes me think that the way it issupposed to be is just the opposite — that there is a place brimming with goodness and life and healing and joy. It is championed by a true King who is our hope in a world where our last light, as it were, really has gone out.

I hope we can look further beyond the headlines and find a way to have great compassion for our friends who have lost so much, and remember in the midst of darkness that we can take great comfort in the solidarity of Jesus on the cross. We can groan for a better world with them, and turn back to Him. His power has sent darkness back into oblivion, and yet He wears no bat suit and carries no sword.

“The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine.”- Isaiah 9:2