I don’t know about you, but when Sunday’s violence just up the road in Oak Creek, Wisconsin was occurring I was sitting safely in my pew next to a good friend who is worried about her father’s progressing Alzheimer’s and in front of a lovely older couple who are worried about some of the declines in health that you might imagine. As the events in the Sikh Gurdwaw (meaning the Gateway to the Guru), or temple, were reaching their horrific climax, our congregation was singing:

“O for a world where everyone/Respects each other's ways,/Where love is lived and all is done/With justice and with praise… O for a world preparing for/God's glorious reign of peace,/Where time and tears will be no more,/And all but love will cease.

Our pastor had just finished preaching a sermon titled, “When our Theology Goes on Tilt,” responding to the horrific events of the previous week in Colorado. She was trying to help us all begin to right ourselves, make some meaning amid news stories that filled our struggling hearts and minds with the awful and the evil (the official definition of evil being, simply, the absence of good). She told us what she admitted she needed to hear; it was what we all needed to hear. It is what, I confess to you, I need to hear once again in these days…

She reminded us how unhelpful it can be when other people offer consolation to us by defining God’s will in the face of horrible tragedy, and of how our greatest and most certain consolation is always that God is with us during these times, so closely, that it often quite hard for us to see him. She affirmed that God was most tenderly with all who died and with all who are suffering and grieving. That God is most tenderly with us and our loved ones right now as we are trying to right ourselves once again in the wake of more senseless violence, death and loss; and that God is with each of us in all our times of grief and pain, uncertainty and fear. She affirmed that, despite our inclinations towards believing all the evidence to the contrariety, God is with each of us as we struggle to pick up the pieces of our shattered world views, our broken hearts and souls.

In an interview with Sojourners Magazine, responding to the events in Wisconsin, Ralph Singh, an international Sikh leader, offered these words: “A Sikh, wherever they go in the world, is committed to building community a community of peace, an inclusive community to stand as an affirmation of what we now call pluralism," and asks that we join the Sikh community in sharing our stories, personal and those of our faith traditions so that we all might work toward the goal of Sikh communities which is working toward building a more compassionate and inclusive society.

To my ear, our stories sound quite alike.

Let us pray this week to see more clearly God with us, whatever the circumstance might be and for the deep consolation and profound comfort that our hearts need. Let us ask for the grace to become partners with God, and with one another, in creating a more compassionate and inclusive community. Let us pray for a world where everyone respects each other’s ways, a world where all that we do seeks justice and love, and in sings praise to God. May all that we are and all that do sing of our prayer for a world of peace and unceasing love. Amen.

image credit:  India Post: the Voice of Indians World Wide, February. 2011. A meeting of the Indianapolis Interfaith Hunger Initiative.