Why do the best among us so often seem to hurt the worst?
In Paducah, Kentucky, the Jenkins family sent their twins, Mandy and Missy, off to high school on that first Monday in December, 1997.
On Christmas Eve the twins would turn 16. These were fun days, exciting days for them. And for their whole family, for that matter. Despite their arthritic mother’s dependence on a wheelchair, still the twins and any other member of the family would have been quick to tell any inquirer that these were good days for them.
In fact, they would have told you that God was blessing their family. Happy in their church, confident in their faith, these Christian people knew the sense of well-being that belongs to those who know God loves them.
Mandy and Missy went to school earlier than usual that fateful Monday to share in a before-school Bible study and prayer time with several of their classmates. The meeting was over and the participants were dispersing into the school hallway when the first shots rang out.
Several students who had bowed in prayer only moments before now lay in pools of blood, victims of an angry, unbelieving student who somehow perceived this band of believers as a threat.
Some would say, I suppose, that Missy was one of the lucky ones. The bullet that struck her did not kill her.
One doctor, himself a friend to the Jenkins family and a member of the church they belong to, says the shot that hit Missy deflected off her collar bone down through her lung and then sliced through her spinal cord. When the bubbly Christian sophomore walked out of that prayer meeting on December 1, she took her last step.
Missy’s parents are still numb with grief, as you would expect. And who can begin to describe the tempest in Mandy’s heart, linked to Missy’s irreparable paralysis as only a twin could be?
Missy’s devastated family have to be asking, “Why this senseless mayhem? Why Missy? Dear Lord, why?”
And all the answers well-meaning friends and church leaders dare to hazard will likely hurt more than help. Because the truth is that nobody knows why good people soak up more than their share of life’s misery.
All we do know is that earth’s only sinless man died in agony on a cross. And we walk where he led.