There's no making sense of it. Yesterday my hometown, a small city and tight-knit community, suffered the kind of senseless violence that makes national news. The story is alarmingly common: gun-wielding maniac opens fire in a crowd. When it happens somewhere unfamiliar, we watch the story unfold like a movie plot. Discussion of it might make the dinner table... "Man, if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere," you might comment before adding, "pass the salt." But no headline in an old paper can prepare someone for the heartache of knowing the first-hand truth of those casual words. It really can happen anywhere.

I'm 2,035 miles from the crime scene, and can feel the ripple-effect through friends and family from here. I read the news accounts as if they were a letters from home. The survivors and witnesses are not just names in the news — They're people who've traveled the same streets as me. It doesn't matter that I don't know them. I know the place they'll see as they attempt to put their lives back together. Can't imagine what it will look like through their eyes, but I do know it to be a good spot. I hope they find faith-restoring examples of kindness and generosity of spirit in places they don't expect.

None of the victims wanted to be famous for this. And the town with so much else to be proud of doesn't want to be remembered for it either. So I won't send one more detailed account of the tragedy into the public sphere. The who and where in this story is not as important as the what: A community I care about is heart sick, and there's just no cure for that but time. I send sincere condolences to the affected people today, and wish for them a speedy recovery.