When Tragedy Strikes

Our hearts ache. All eyes across the nation are on Texas as devastating floodwaters have claimed lives, homes, and futures. With every breaking headline, we feel a collective heaviness. We mourn with the mourning. We ache with those whose lives have been upended. When tragedy strikes many find themselves asking the agonizing questions: Where is God? Where was He when the waters rose? Where is He now?

These are honest questions – grief-born and heartbreak-shaped. But if we’re honest, even if God Himself answered them, would His answers truly satisfy us? As a parent who has known the searing pain of child loss, I can say with certainty: No, they wouldn’t. Because in deep grief, answers don’t soothe. Presence does.

When tragedy strikes and the dam of sorrow bursts, we are thrust back into a place we thought we had left behind. The ache is raw, and the grief feels new, even if it’s old. What do we do?

We crawl – slowly, painfully, maybe even begrudgingly, into the lap of the One who knows grief intimately. The One who weeps with us. The One whose shoulders are strong enough to carry our questions, our wailing, our silence. And there, in His arms, we do the only thing we can do – we let ourselves be held.

We may not understand His ways. We may not even like them. But we can still choose to lean into His presence – not for answers, but for comfort. In these unspeakable moments, words fail. But God does not. He doesn’t expect us to tie our pain in a neat bow. He invites us to rest, even when our hearts rage.

We cry out, not because we grasp His plan, but because we trust His heart. As author Ann Voskamp so honestly reminds us, “God would rather have us wail wildly at Him than for us to apathetically walk away from Him.”

So, where do we go? We turn to Him. Tear-streaked, breathless, broken – we turn to Him.

And for those of us watching from afar, we pray. We lift up the names we may never know and the faces we may never see. We carry them in intercession, knowing that the God who holds us also holds them.

In tragedy, we do not have to understand. We only need to know this: He is near to the brokenhearted, and He saves those crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).

Let us, with trembling hands, cling to that truth—and simply be held.

“Mourn with those who mourn.” Romans 12:15