“When a young person dies, a universe of possibility dies as well.”
CCO Area Director Bob Robinson sums up how many of us within the CCO have experienced the heartbreaking news from Blacksburg, Virginia this past week. In the wake of the massacre of 32 individuals at Virginia Tech on Monday, students and professors, Bob writes,
As I watch the haunting images on my TV screen, I think of the students I meet every week: their smiles, their exuberance, their wide-eyed wonder at the possibilities in front of them. When our ministry is at its best is when we succeed in helping to turn on the light for students—for them to understand that life has meaning and purpose, that God is calling them into not just a job for the sake of the “American Dream,” but into vocation for the sake of bringing God’s kingdom and God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. I find few things as exciting as knowing that a college student gets it—that their life can be about being a part of God’s grand plan of redemption and restoration.
I see hope in this generation. I see possibility.
And for the lives of these college students at Virginia Tech to be snuffed out like this…
…it just makes me weep.
We do not have a ministry presence at Virginia Tech, but the students with whom we work are, like all of us, struggling to make sense of these brutal murders. The fact that they happened in residence halls and classrooms makes it that much more horrifying to them.
Our president, Dan Dupee, has called our staff to prayer. “I would encourage you to call on God on behalf of those most directly affected by what has happened at Virginia Tech,” he writes. “The most memorable advice on how to pray has come from a pastor in Blacksburg, who has pointed people to Romans 12, that we would ‘not be overcome by evil, but would overcome evil with good.’”
This is the message our staff workers are trying to convey to the students whom they serve. Whether in a prayer vigil at the University of Pittsburgh or in the midst of checking in with individual students at Penn State University, staff and students across our region are gathering to pray and to process what it means to believe in a good God, even and especially in the midst of tragedy.
CCO staff member, Kayla Gray, ministers to students at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where many of the students actually knew the victims of the shooting. They grew up together, or they attended the same high schools. Kayla has spent time one-on-one and in small groups, talking with, praying with, comforting and crying with students.
Kayla and our staff at the 82 schools where we currently serve are making a point of helping students to think through what it means to be human, created in God’s image, and living in a broken world. How do we deal with the reality that brutality happens every day, somewhere in the world? What is an appropriate response? How do we live in the hope of the resurrection when there is death and destruction all around us?
We love college students. We believe that they are truly our hope for the future. Please join with us as we pray for them and minister to them, that they would find healing, comfort, understanding, and hope—the hope that is found only in the Resurrection.