We all feel the effects of the fall, whether we choose to recognize it or not.  We don’t know why we do the things we do.  We’re hurt by others, both close friends and family.  Mosquitoes exist.  Every day we are confronted by the fact that things are not the way they were meant to be.

Today, two Virginia Tech students were murdered.  I didn’t know them, having only been here for two weeks, but nevertheless, I believe that this will be a largely significant even for me.  Inevitably, I will run into people that knew them in various capacities.  My job is to meet with students, some of who will have had classes with them, lived in the same dorm, or been involved with them in Campus Crusade.  More directly, I live with three guys who are all involved with campus crusade: one as a student, one as an intern, and one on staff.  If they didn’t know them, much of their energy over the next weeks and months will be spent helping others wrestle with this tragedy.  Although removed from this event in many ways, I don’t doubt that this will be a frequent topic of conversation for the foreseeable future.

So what do I do?  How do I bear the burdens of others in this context?  What does the Gospel of grace say to this situation?  How is God at work in the hearts of students, whether RUF or not, whether they knew the students or not, whether believers or not?  These aren’t questions I’m necessarily looking for an answer for, but want to try and keep in mind over the next weeks and months as people try and make sense of this in a million different ways.

Please be in prayer for this situation.  For the families of the students, for friends of the students, for people on campus that didn’t know them but are shocked by it, for people that remember the shootings on April 16th years ago and wonder why God would let yet another tragedy befall the campus, for the counselors at Tech, and especially for those on the campus that are there to bring the light of the Gospel to students, whether the RUF staff, Crusade workers, BCM, IV, FCA, or anyone else who has a heart for students and a heart for the Gospel.  Pray that we, as people who are still being remade, would minister well to broken students at a broken campus in a broken world.  Praise God that we have the hope of the Gospel that God is making all things new.