Remembering 30 years on - Oklahoma City Bombing

On April 19, 1995, I was in Côte d'Ivoire in my very first months in West Africa. 
I had just traveled several hours north for our group conference and was getting settled into the second floor of the guesthouse at hour training center. I had made my way to the central kitchen area to get some water and Cathy Davison was listening to the BBC news on the radio. She told me there had been a bomb in Oklahoma City and my first response was, "That's not the sort of thing that is supposed to happen" back home. 

Back in 1995, there was no internet to speak of. I got on the phone in our guesthouse and finally got a call through to my family back home. After supper, I watched a 3 minute segment on the Ivorian news that night. Then I waited the better part of a week for the Newsweek to come out with pictures and more details. And I wrestled for the first time with terror and its place in our world. 

I now have lived long enough to see the face of evil in so many places I have been: Bamako, Gao, Timbuktu, Ouagadougou, Nairobi, Paris, Beirut, Yemen, Grand Bassam. And I know now that this is not something that any place can say they are exempt from.

But in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, we saw people come together in spite of their differences with hope and resilience. And I have seen that in the other places mentioned above. Love and hope are stronger than hatred. 

On this 30th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma City, it is Holy Saturday. I think it's fitting that we sit with this remembrance of evil on this day between Good Friday and Easter. On Good Friday, Christ endured all the evil the world had to give, and it seemed like death won. On Saturday, we sit and remember but we look ahead with hope to Easter, when Christ conquered death and evil and sin.

One of my favorite parts about the Oklahoma City Memorial is the unofficial memorial that Saint Joseph's Catholic Church erected just across the street from the site, well before the official memorial was finished. It's called "And Jesus Wept", showing Jesus with his back to the bombing site. He is in white and surrounded by black granite columns representing the children whose lives were lost and a wall with a hole for each victim. We are reminded that Christ enters into our suffering with us and is grieved by it. 

The pedestal of the statue has the inscription "And Jesus Wept". 

The official memorial is across the street with two large black walls  bookending a reflecting pool. 

There are glass chairs for each of those 168 people who lost their lives. 

Lastly, there is the "Survivor Tree" that somehow managed to survive the blast and became a centerpiece of the memorial and a reminder of endurance and hope in the face of evil. 

We remember but we do not grieve or despair like those who have no hope.

I Thessalonians 4:13