While I attended highschool my Mom did the most embarrassing thing. Every Valentines day she would somehow sabotage my locker ever Valentines Day. I say sabotage but I’m sure her intent was to decorate it. One year I came back from class to find red and pink balloons stuck to it. Other years it was a bouquet of flowers or box of chocolates. And always a card saying how much she loved me. So sweet unless you’re the most awkward unpopular teen in the class and everyone’s skeptically asking who your secret admirer is. Now I understand her beautiful desire to not have her daughter feel left out or unwanted.
This is the memory that came up for me this Valentines. I don’t know how other families might incorporate Valentines in their homes but I know this weekend for many families in our province, the fun of love will be eclipsed by the pain of loss. It feels almost wrong to pass out red hearts and sing love songs when parents expecting to pick their children up after school are making funeral arrangements or are tending to wounded bodies and minds.
It took a while for it to sink in for me. At first another headline, and disbelief at the location, the number of injured and dead. But as faces and names were shared, my heart began to ache for the traumatized and grieving community. The emotional ripple swept across the entire country and beyond.
You don’t have to be directly connected to feel disoriented. And with Valentine’s Day on the horizon, the celebration of love is a jarring contrast.
Can love and lament coexist? I appreciate how the ancient text of Scripture points to that truth. We can remain tethered to love in the tension of loss. Love in the Bible bleeds. Love weeps. Love stays present in suffering. The Psalms give us language for this: joy and grief often sit side by side. Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb even knowing resurrection was coming. Israel did not cancel worship when tragedy struck—they brought their anguish into worship. That’s your invitation this week. Don’t compete with the holiday. Redeem it.
The clearest symbol of love in Christianity is not flowers, hearts or chocolate —it’s the cross. Jesus entered a world of political violence, state execution, betrayal, and public trauma. He did not stand far off and offer explanations. He entered it. And He was killed by the hatred of the world.
So when we ask, “Where is God in a school shooting?” the Gospel answer is not abstract. Jesus is with the wounded. He is with the grieving. Jesus consistently moved toward those in psychological and spiritual distress. God is also with the tragic complexity of a young life so broken it ends in murder-suicide. The shooter was not beyond the need of grace.
The cross tells us God does not prevent all violence. God does not abandon us in violence. God will judge evil. God will heal what evil destroys. That doesn’t remove pain. But it should bring some level of comfort and strength when we face it and feel it. And the empty tomb of resurrection does not undo this week—but it promises this week is not the end of the story.
So this Valentines, it’s okay if you don’t feel celebratory. It’s also okay if you still go to dinner. It’s okay if joy feels wrong. It’s okay if joy feels necessary. Grief and love are not opposites. In fact, grief is the cost of love. We only ache because we care.
May the tragic evidence of profound brokenness lead us to see our need for the Truest Love. And be inspired by covenant love that shows up and refuses to look away from suffering. Choose to respond with prayer and take action with compassion and care as agents of hope and ministers of healing.