An abrupt lesson at VTech

Today at Virginia Tech University 31 people died in a shooting. As a former undergraduate and soon to be graduate student at CSU, I felt for the students as one of their own. Mom said the college years are supposed to be the best years of your life, and as students, we have a chance to break free from home, but we have (at least) a four year delay before entering the real world.

College in some ways, is a haven. A unique place to let one's mind loose on the most current ideas in acadamia and for some, college is one big party. For my first two years, I felt that my future was mine, and the university atmosphere sheltered me so I was free to pursue my premed ambitions without real-world responsibilities. Not all students are carefree like this, and I certainly wasn't my junior and senior year.

But today shattered that illusion for the student body at Virginia Tech. A time when mortality is the last thing on 18-24 year old's minds, students are probably realizing that they were one step away from death or injury. In the next lecture hall over from the one where the shooting took place, in the dining hall instead of the hallway where the dorm shooting was, in the library instead of in class. Chance it seems probably kept some students alive and unhurt.

What are we as Christian college students and alums to do? How does this affect campus preachings? How does this affect outreach to other students? Mortality may be on their minds more. The illusion that the world is theirs to control: what hall to live in, what major to choose, when to have class is shattered. Yet debates won't center around any sort of lofty academic philosophical disussions of doctrine. Questions of faith will be genuine, a student body that's suddenly aware of their fragile mortality will demand to know if there is a Creator, a God, and where He is. Therefore, we can also ask God to show those students on that campus and students everywhere how His hand was in this day, and how He can bring His healing and His light into this situation.