They should be stressed over finals and papers. “We’re all so sorry” seems so empty and shallow.

Late April is crunch time for students on college campuses. Their pace picks up as they cross the street. Their speech becomes faster because their minds are over-loaded with last night’s reading assignment, computer screens and due dates. Their perpetual caffeine state might add to the rpm level.

It is no different in Blacksburg Virginia, home of Virginia Tech. I spent five years there as a pastor working mostly with college students. It is not a sleepy Virginia hamlet. It is a dynamic, bustling college town. This time of year attendance at church and small group Bible studies for students gets a little thin. Those who make it to such events emphatically ask for prayer about papers that are due, upcoming exams and summer internships. That’s the way it should be. Now something has changed. They have more urgent prayer needs now.

Students at Tech got robbed yesterday, and to say “we’re all so sorry” seems so empty and shallow. Their sense of normalcy is gone forever. Belief in fellow students is shaken. One of their own has betrayed them. Is there another traitor on campus, in your dorm or townhouse, on your floor? They should be stressed over finals and papers.

Ambler Johnson is primarily a freshman dorm known for the things a freshman dorm is supposed to be known for. All that died yesterday. Now it is a crime scene. It will be remembered as such for years to come. The home of a co-ed's murder and a hero RA’s tragic death. How do you go back to that dorm? How does anyone sleep there again?

Norris Hall is a classroom building. My wife once worked in the building right next to it. Tech is known for its engineering program and many of the engineering classes are held there. It is place for the interchange of ideas and, the education of the mind, a place to hand in papers and take exams. All that died on Monday shortly after 9:00 A.M.. Now it is a house of horrors, the home of the greatest shooting massacre in American history. Every campus tour for a decade to come will point that sad fact out. How do you feel safe going to class there? All other memories of Norris move to the recesses of one’s mind and the terror of 4/16 moves front and center.

College is a season for great friends and good times with academic exercises sandwiched in between. The university experience at VT has been changed. It is a time to grow up. But please, not this fast. Now it’s a time for grieving and guilt. Grieving over loss. The loss of friends, the loss of security, the loss of hope. Guilt because you blew off German class because of Sunday night’s party and were rewarded with life on Monday. Guilt because everyone you cared about is okay but others have great losses and are wounded so bad. They should be stressed over finals and papers. “We’re all so sorry” seems so empty and shallow.

Adrenaline gets you through a few fleeting days but then all too quickly reality comes in like an unwelcome spring nor’easter. It chills one to the bone. Today a Tech student said, “I lived through Columbine, I lived through 9/11 and I’ve lived through this.” That’s what is so bad. This generation has had to see and live so much tragedy. I fear they will be labeled, “the tragic generation.” At the time when they should be stressing over exams and finals they have to worry when the world might blow up on them.

It is as if the thief who comes but to rob, kill and destroy identified by Jesus in the gospels has taken special aim at this generation. The students at Virginia Tech as well as those on college campuses across our country need our prayers. They are not the Columbine generation, they are not the 9/11 or now the Tech Massacre generation. They are so much more. They are the future. They are the hope and possibilities of this new millennium. They are the moms and dads and grand moms and grand dads of the century to come.

We are told not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good. Let’s pray that we and those who have seen, heard and experienced so much tragedy may find the God given grace and wisdom to overcome such unbridled wickedness with overpowering good.

Dave Watson,
An Urban Christian