Why Jesus Weeps

Sylvia groped for answers – no, answers were not what she expected or even wanted. Answers asked too much. Answers were out of the question. Not explanations either – every explanation was beyond her imagination. Maybe responses. Any response would do, though she had no idea what it would sound or look like or who might offer it.

She caressed her coffee mug’s warmth as she tried to read about Friday’s massacre. Children and adults, warm and alive, condemned too young to death by a mad man with a gun. So quickly so cold, small bodies and bodies of their grown-up protectors. Then, a gun to the killer’s own head by his own hand, and the madness stopped. Silence, except for final gasps and moans, cries of survivors, weeping of children who had heard the chaos through thin walls. Cold chill.

“Answers” quickly posted on social media and confidently hawked by TV’s gurus (so full of themselves!) rang hollow: stronger gun laws and better mental health services and and more security in schools and less violence on TV and in games and stronger families and blah and blah and blah... “Explanations” cracked like gunshots in the electronic universe, as impotent and unlikely to change what needed changing as the flash of distant lightning at the end of a summer’s day. Real, yes; but distant, and silent.

Quasi-spiritual and religious answers and explanations most riled Sylvia, herself a good Christian. People justified their own beliefs upon altars built of children’s corpses, proposing that somehow their particular version of “god” made sense of it all, or maybe conveyed some comfort. As if their “god” had known what he or she was doing Friday morning. As if all those kids and teachers and administrators were somehow destined to “go to Jesus” then and there. As if that made the whole bloody affair okay, just fine, all neat and sweet...thank you, Jesus!

Nonsense! Whose “god” dared claim any right to do such a thing, or even just to have been looking the other way while a crazed killer’s gun preemptively sent time’s young to eternity? Sylvia could not imagine who could think her own grandchildren would be happier “with Jesus” than with their own families, or that those families would be pleased to think “god” had taken their children from them. No comfort in that. If “god” possessed any power at all, why the hell hadn’t he or she used it right then? Now it was too late, far too late. Sylvia believed...but this morning she didn’t know in what or whom.

The old coffee mug cooled. Low and thick clouds locked the morning’s dawn out of earth, still dark at 9:00 a.m. No light penetrated the absence of explanations, the dearth of answers. No light, no illumination, no response. Sylvia wept for the children, for the adults, for the shooter, for the families, for the future, for herself.

A knock on the back door lifted her out of her morass. Beth, her long-time neighbor and dear friend, stood in the doorway, bearing fresh-baked muffins on a plastic tray. Sylvia brewed more coffee, and they sat at the familiar kitchen table, silent, in the dark. The morning news paused between them.

They reached for the warmth of filled mugs and touched the warmth of friendship. They knew now, in that moment, why Jesus weeps.

Monday’s news reported that gun sales had been unusually good over the weekend.