Journeys 9-9-12 Blue Hill Bus Crash

Cindy and I were co-pastors at Seward when their buses carrying their high school band crashed on the way home from a competition in Omaha, killing four.  So when the fifteen passenger van filled with Broken Bow high school basketball players and coaches crashed this past year, my brother Todd, pastor of the United Methodist Church there called me to ask me about that Seward bus crash experience.

I shared with him our experience of community grief at four community-wide funerals.  And how that grief affected everything; the band, the school and churches for a very long time.  We also talked about how when children die tragically like that, it messes with we adults’ sense of the order of things.  We do not expect our children to die before us.  That’s not the way its supposed to happen.  

I told my brother Todd that my experience as pastor both at Seward and in Charleston, SC after hurricane Hugo was that if there were people on the edge, emotionally, before these tragedies, this sent them tumbling over that edge.  

Today we join churches all over this state in praying for the folks of the Blue Hill area.  Four people, (two adults & two children) were killed in a tragic bus crash on Wednesday.  We pray for the families who lost a loved one.  We pray for their churches and school and community.  We do what we know how to do to offer comfort and support to their overwhelming grief and shock.

When our child died in the midst of being born in 1994, folks gave us tons of books and pamphlets to help us.  For us, the best book turned out to be one called, “The Worst Loss,”  by Barbara D. Rosof.  We’ve given that book to families who’ve lost a child ever since.  At Seward, the folks from “The Compassionate Friends” in Omaha who specialize in grief and ministering to parents who’ve experienced the death of a child sent us boxes and boxes of materials to pass out to the community.  We’ve shared that web-site ever since.

These materials help folks when they start to come out of the fog of grief and are searching for a way to make sense of the brokenness of their lives.  The community of Blue Hill and all of us surrounding communities will be doing everything in our power to support and hold up those who have experienced this tragic loss; to keep them from drowning in their loss, until they can once again swim on their own.  So please include these folks in your daily prayers for these next several months.  I know from experience that they feel these prayers.  Thanks.

Grace & Peace,