How Long, Lord? -- Reflections on Las Vegas, Emotions, & the Problem of Evil

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
    and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”-Psalm 13:1-2

                This morning I came back from my early class around ten. I had just taken a difficult test and felt mentally drained as I plopped down on the sofa and pulled out my phone to indulge in a moment of mental numbness. But instead of a distracting meme or a liking a few pictures on Instagram, I was inundated with breaking news on the shooting in Las Vegas Sunday evening.

                Video after horrifying video—crowds of screaming concertgoers, rounds and rounds of bullets fired senselessly from an automatic weapon, cries of sorrow and cries for help.

                I wept.

There on my living couch, bathed in the late morning sunlight, I cried bitterly, letting the tears spill and stream down my cheeks.

I had sat on my couch seeking some kind of respite—from feeling, from caring, from thinking. I wanted Twitter and Facebook and text messages. I wanted apathy to relieve me from feeling so much, but instead I cried hard and long, unaware of the time that passed.

The crying slowly dried up, but a dull ache was left in its stead. I pressed my warm face against the cool window. My heart hurt, and my mind seemed dizzy, spinning out of control with the pain, the anger, the weariness, the just not understanding.

                How long, Lord, how long?

                In moments, in tragedies, like this, I feel terrified and forgotten. When I see and feel nothing but sorrow in the hearts of man I wonder where peace, that blessed thing, is. Where was peace, where was protection when people huddled against the ground as people around them were reigned upon with bullets?

                God, where were You as the gunman squeezed the trigger?

    I know You love all sinners, but did You love him even then?

                Did Your heart break, Father, as Your child killed so many of Your children?

                This the problem of pain. We live in an evil world, friends, and what’s more, the evil isn’t confined to just the madmen or the sociopaths or the murderers—we, too, see horrifying glimpses of sin and darkness in the mailman, in the lawyer, in the grocery checker, and perhaps the most terrifying—in ourselves.

                Man is fallen and base. As a race of humans, we have earned death. But God is good and we are saved by the death of our Savior on a cross, no? We have been spared the wages of sin, have we not? So why do we still suffer?

                This question is not simple. Perhaps you have heard it discussed before by religious and nonreligious people, by Christians and non-Christians alike. Perhaps you have let it tumble over itself in your mind, conscious of its inherently painful, complicated nature.

    I have, too.

                In in the questioning, in the spiritual, mental, emotional darkness, perhaps you, like me, like David writing the Psalm, have cried out into the unfathomable sky:

             How long, Lord?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I take counsel in my soul
            and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

As I watched those horrifying videos over and over again, I the same words played in my head—Lord, have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. This world is broken beyond repair. There is no human conception, no human action, no human word alone which can fix the utter wickedness and corruption of our earth.

Yet, we haven’t been called to apathy or inaction. We are called to fully feel and experience the extent of human brokenness ("Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."-Matthew 5:4) Our weeping—our sorrow—must drive us to action.

We are peacemakers, not peacekeepers, gatekeepers for justice for the innocent, comforters, listeners, givers of love, speakers of life, holy advocates—all these in the name of the Lord who has sent us and tasked us.

It is a hard road. I weep, and in my weeping, I am weary.

Apathy is easy.

But we must not shake away or shun our sorrow. It is part of this earthly life as follower of Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, He promised us we would suffer.

There will be long nights, terrible days, days when we can barely muster a whisper:

Please, Lord…

And days when we will cry out, weary, but loud:

How long, Lord?

And even days when we feel so defeated by the world--

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

For those days, those nights, and everything in between, cling to His very goodness. His comforting word. In the face of unspeakable, unfathomable evil and pain, don’t neglect to finish Psalm 13—

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

This is my song in the endless night. 

In Daylight & Darkness, 

Zoe