“You should have been there!”
We’ve all been in situations where we’re in a group, some word or phrase is said and everyone else bursts into laughter except you. Someone kindly tries to explain the situation they all are laughing at but it loses in the retelling. It isn’t funny now. “You should have been there!” they say.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw “The Sound of Music”. If you’re too young to have heard of it, it’s a famous old movie. I was in Norway for the summer with my Mom. Relatives took me to the first showing of the movie in their city -- I’m revealing my age here. There were no empty seats in the theatre. When the movie got to the graveyard scene, the theatre was completely silent. As soon as the Nazis left the graveyard, all over the theatre, people collectively exhaled. I hadn’t realized until then that virtually everyone had been holding their breath. They had lived through the horrors of WW2 Nazi bombings and oppression. The movie triggered memories I did not share. I had not “been there.” Six months later, back in the U.S., I went with a friend to see “The Sound of Music” again. At the end of the graveyard scene, I didn’t hear anyone exhale. WW2 was distant from American shores. We had not “been there”.
Today Norway is grieving the brutal deaths of almost one hundred of it’s citizens. For most of us, we can only “feel” how awful it must be if we’ve experienced something similar -- 9/11, the VA Tech shootings...if we were “there”.
But each of us can take seriously the injunction: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” (The Bible, Romans 12:15). And so, to Norway we say, “We’re so very sorry. We stand with you as you mourn. May you know God’s comfort and presence in the midst of senseless trauma and pain.”
