After a week marked by Charlie Kirk’s assassination anniversary and 25 years since 9/11, an old hymn offers a place for grief that politics cannot provide.
After a week like this one, many Americans arrive at Sunday carrying more than they can easily name.
This past week marked one year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking to students at Utah Valley University. The following day, our nation observed the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, when 2,977 people were murdered in New York, at the Pentagon, and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
May we draw as near as circumstances allow, sit with them in their sorrow, speak the names of those they love, and remind them that grief does not have to be carried alone.
Though different in scale and circumstance, both remind us that evil never remains theoretical. Eventually, it enters a crowd, a cockpit, an office, a home, leaving behind blood, unanswered questions, and an empty chair.
Public trauma always becomes private sorrow, one household at a time.
We understandably respond with investigations, arguments, and demands for accountability. We should seek truth and justice. Evil should be named without apology. But grief should not have to pass an ideological examination before we treat it as grief.
