Editorial: Weeping for all of Rachel’s children
‘A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” — Jeremiah 31:15
KERRVILLE, TEXAS — The stories leave us breathless. The pictures stop our hearts. We’ve been here before. We don’t ever want to come here again. But we will. And so we refuse to be comforted.
When the Guadalupe River mutated from a swift-flowing stream to a marauding wall of water leaving death in its rubble, we rushed to our phones, checked our texts, scrolled through social media feeds.
The photos and stories resurfaced a nauseous dread we had buried beneath the scars of tragedies past.
Especially in Texas.
In part because the Guadalupe is a Texas river and only a Texas river, born of three branches in Kerr County that emerge from springs of the Edwards Aquifer, pure and cold. It bisects our capital city of Austin. It cools swimmers and kayakers in the summer. And in early July, it killed our children.
The Guadalupe is ours. So the betrayal runs deep.
I know. The story — and the pain — are not uniquely Texan. But we feel it because it’s close. Because, as Chris Carrillo, pulpit minister for the Riverside Church of Christ in Kerrville, told me that weekend, “We are all just one degree of separation from someone who was lost.”
“It may not have affected us,” the young minister said, “but it has directly affected all of us.”
“Our voices join the cries of others, weeping for their children. … We are overwhelmed by the little ones whose smiling faces seem to transform against our will into the faces of our own children and grandchildren.”
Sadly, we are not alone. Our voices join the cries of others, weeping for their children. We remember the tiny white socks on the feet of Baylee Almon, carried by a firefighter from the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing. We remember the victims of Columbine and Sandy Hook and Uvalde.
Do we remember the children of Gaza? Of South Sudan? Of Kyiv? Do we remember the young Vietnamese girl fleeing naked from the napalm? And do we remember she was one of many? Have we forgotten the children of Africa, born with AIDS or taken by malaria? Do we remember Rachel’s children, slain by a madman in search of a messiah?
Or do we only remember children who look like our own?
Campers from the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston pray during Camp Bandina last week.
In fairness, adults lost in disasters were beloved, too — by a parent or child, a spouse or friend. But we are overwhelmed by the little ones whose smiling faces seem to transform against our will into the faces of our own children and grandchildren.
Christians ask, “Why?” So do unbelievers. And we would be fools to pretend we can offer an answer. Yes, God is good, all the time. We plead in prayer to believe that more confidently. But the world is scarred and enraptured with the evil one. And for now, we are stuck in this world.
“The creation groans,” Paul wrote in Romans. And sometimes it shakes. It burns. It floods. Sometimes its creatures are selfish, unfaithful and mad.
So until we are set free from this “enslavement to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” the best we can do is refrain from platitudes, hold each other up and do our feeble best to protect all of Rachel’s children.
CHERYL MANN BACON is a Christian Chronicle contributing editor who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University. Contact [email protected].
Welcome to Billionaire Club Co LLC, your gateway to a brand-new social media experience! Sign up today and dive into over 10,000 fresh daily articles and videos curated just for your enjoyment. Enjoy the ad free experience, unlimited content interactions, and get that coveted blue check verification—all for just $1 a month!
Account Frozen
Your account is frozen. You can still view content but cannot interact with it.
Please go to your settings to update your account status.
Open Profile Settings