I realize that this posting is “late.â€Â The horrific massacre at Pulse in Orlando is nearly a week ago. I have struggled to wonder what I can add to all that 
has been written already. Some of it has been wonderful and some decidedly not. But as one of the pastors of a church that has a huge connection to Va. Tech and hundreds of students that attend, I would like to say this to our church that is dispersed all over the country (and globe) this summer.
We, unfortunately, understand a small part of what the LGBTQ community is going through right now. Â Only a small part, but we need to own the small part that we get.
Because we can understand this part of it, we must realize that the LGBTQ community is going to stagger under the weight of this for a long time – this won’t be wrapped up by the end of June. I think of Job’s friends that heard Job was suffering greatly. They stopped what they were doing and went to him, wept with him and simply sat with him. They were a presence with their friend who was staggering under the weight of what had happened.
12When they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. And each of them tore his robe and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky. 13Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great. Job 2.12,13
They stopped what they were doing, broke into their normal lives and were simply with Job, stepped into his suffering. Powerful words for us.
Yet we must also realize that there are ways that we DO NOT understand what the LGBTQ community is going through. After the shootings, I (even though I was right beside campus when the shootings happened) was not ever in greater danger because I am a Hokie. The LGBTQ community very well could be.  It is fair that the LGBTQ community is more frightened after this attack. As a result we need to get busy with a few things.
Job’s friends, after sitting with him for seven days, began to speak. They started reciting the cultural script; if someone bad happens to you, God must be punishing you for something you have done. Now this wasn’t an accurate understanding of God, but it was a common one in their day. So they started running the script and as they did that, started making the mistakes that they are so famous for. Something larger was going on, and they missed it.
Our take-away should not be, “I can never say anything for fear I will be wrong.â€Â Rather our take-away from all this should be a great sense of humility when we step into someone else’s suffering and a heightened sense of awareness for our potential knee jerk reactions.
To the LGBTQ community, hear this. We are desperately sorry for what happened to you. You were hunted at Pulse and this just adds another example of violence to the long history of it you have had to experience. It was wrong and we will seek to walk with you through it any way that we can.  I think of the words of Brother Lawrence, whose letters were compiled into The Practice of the Presence of God.  “You need not cry very loud; God is nearer to us than we think.”
These next words from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome might seem a bit cliché, as they are thrown around a great deal after horrible things like this. But to me they are my hope. I believe that as Jesus is more fully known in our beautiful but broken world, we will see them more fully realized.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12.21 Â
