Most Sunday mornings I take my dog Simone for a walk around a local high school less than a mile from my house. She loves to run in the grass and the parking lots with no one around, and I get time to just pray and think and talk to the Lord while we’re walking.

Today on our walk around Bearden, I found a memorial garden where most of the ages that on the gravestones are 15, 16 and 17. I don’t know how these kids died, but we’d all agree a child ought not die before their parents. That’s just how things are supposed to be.

I thought about each of these parents connected to each of the roughly 25 stones that I saw. Would talking to them about a conversation between Evodious and Augustine mean anything to them? My answer to the problem of evil, sin, and suffering must reach people in a real world of tragedy, loss and pain. It is insufficient to throw Christian platitudes at people and tell them that all this happened just so we could freely choose God and love him.

“Trust and wait for what is still unseen” (from Romans 8:24) is the sign on the church across the street where I stopped to jot this note down. God give us grace to have real answers for a world in pain. And God give us grace to make the effort that will be required to push into this. I want the empathy, connection, and love that Jesus would have with these parents, if he were sitting down with each of them.