Reacting to Tragic News

News stories evoke visceral reactions. Sometimes the headlines intend to provoke attention to or against an agenda and steer us toward a desired reaction. If we read deeply into the article, our reaction may change or become more intense. A police officer shot and killed a black immigrant in Dallas last Thursday night. Your reaction as you read those words would probably differ from what you would have felt if you had read that an accountant who was a great song leader at his church and a graduate of a private Christian university had been killed in his apartment by an intruder. Yet both sentences describe the same event that occurred this past week in Dallas, Texas. Here is a link to an article about that event.As we read or watch news media, as we interact on social media, as we talk with friends, we will react to what we see or hear. Our challenge is to read or listen carefully, and to seek to learn what actually is the case before we react too strongly. As the case described above unfolds, we will learn more about what transpired and why it happened. In the meantime, a Christian family in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and the Churches of Christ throughout the Caribbean who knew the young man who was killed as one of their own and a song leader at regional lectureships, will cope with their grief. I know how it feels to lose a loved one to death without warning. I don’t know what exactly they feel, but I know how I felt when my son died from an aneurysm three years ago. We need to pray for them as they grieve, for the officer who killed him and for her family (she and they will have to come to terms with what she did, however the investigation ends), and for friends of Botham Jean, our brother in Christ, as they respond to their new reality. We need to pray for ourselves, that we may overcome prejudices and fear as we learn to love one another. Let us seek peace and pursue it. Let us love truth, however harshly it may grate against what we desire. Let us be gentle with one another. Pray hard, my friends. (A previous version of this blog appeared in the bulletin of Leavenworth (KS) Church of Christ on September 9, 2018).s