From one of my fav Biblical scholar- NT Wright on the tragedy at Virginia Tech
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Having said all that, what my faith tradition insists upon, in a way that marks it out at this point from most if not all other faith traditions, is that the fact of the incarnation and the cross means that the creator God is with us in the middle of the horror, sharing and bearing the pain and the burden. This, clearly, is why so many medieval churches -- at a time of endless wars, incurable diseases, social ills, and so on -- had (to us) quite graphic and gory pictures and statues of the crucifixion.
The church has always found, not always explicitly in words but often through symbol and action, and supremely the Eucharist, that the God we know in Jesus Christ is not, as it were, the lofty C.E.O. of the Universe, 'running' the world as it were at a distance, but the God who is strangely present in the midst of the horror, taking its main weight on himself and working from within to bring healing and hope.
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