This week the Faith in Memphis panel reflects on the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo.

What do you do when you have no coherent worldview to meet that tragedy with?

What do you do when you’re oblivious to the reality that we live in a world where terrible things happen as well as wonderful things because it’s a place where goodness is set against evil?

And what do you do when you have no inkling of the truth that for all the world’s chaos, it’s a place where goodness ultimately wins?

These are the questions my congregation and I reflected on two days after the Aurora massacre. Then, speaking to the light of Christ breaking into the world that no intensity of darkness can overcome and the final triumph of this light, I singled out the gospel as that which keeps us from despair, sustains us in our grief, and rekindles our hope.

Finally, I quoted from the hymn that sings:

This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world, The battle is not done;
Jesus, who died, shall be satisfied, And earth and heav’n be one. (Lyrics: Maltie D. Babcock
Music: Traditional English melody)