Hopes and Prayers

It's been a while since I checked in, but I wanted to thank everyone for their calls and messages this week asking about us. No, I wasn't dispatched to Blacksburg, but I have been involved in our coverage. Working around so much sorrow is not an easy thing.

It's been a tough week to be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia. More than 30 families from all across our adopted home state were lost in a senseless act of evil that struck like a bolt out of the blue.

Neither Barbara nor I went to Virginia Tech, but we've both known lots of people that have. I have regular dealings with people on campus as part of my job. They're hurting right now in a way that we can't possibly understand. Please pray for them.

But also keep the rest of our state in your prayers. Even for those of us who have no tangible connection to Tech, it's been tough. It kind of feels like 9/11 all over again. So much helpless anger, wanting to lash out at the person who had the temerity to attack our people on our home soil. So many of us want to act, to lash out, to do something, anything. But we can't. There is nothing that can be done.

Governor Kaine said it well on Tuesday, when he told a convocation in Blacksburg with tears in his eyes that it's very easy to remember Christ's words of despair on the cross at a time like this: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But he was also right when he said that the best thing we all have going for us is each other.

There's nothing we could do Monday, but there is something we can do now. Pray for those who have been hurt, and do everything we can to help them carry what must be an unbearable burden of grief. Lift one another up to God, so that we can see hope again, where before there was nothing but despair.

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