A Nation in Prayer

[This is a video that features pictures, students speaking, and the Presidents words.]


Yesterday's massacre at Virginia Tech was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Thirty two people - students and professors - died at the hands of a raging young Asian student. The whole country is in a state of shock. The news reports and pictures are heart wrenching, the questions and surmounting, the pain tangible.

Enter President Bush.

In the midst of it all, he addresses the nation with one goal - to comfort the families, to comfort the students, to comfort America.

In such fragile times, our sincerity and efforts are challenged. Our words are chosen carefully. But, President Bush knew what to say. With conviction and sincerity, he addressed the students and families of the victims. He said the following words that reverberated through America and served as the heart of his short appearance:

“Laura and I and many across the nation are praying for the victims, and their families and all the members of the university community that have been devastated by this terrible tragedy." The President closed by saying, "We hold the victims in our hearts, we lift them up in prayer, and we ask a loving G-d to comfort those who are suffering today."

The President's words touched everyone, regardless of religion or political bent. It is what everyone needed to hear - "You are in our prayers."

When we go through hard times and need some extra support, almost nothing anyone says strikes a chord and sounds meaningful. People talk more than they need to. They try to answer questions. They helplessly offer their help.

In the barrage of attempts at comfort, there are those that offer those few words that are the arrow in the bull’s-eye, the words that always seem necessary, helpful, and comforting.

Those words are the following: I'll be praying for you.

Upon hearing them, our heart is a little lighter, even just one small step away from falling apart.

But why? Why does prayer seem so powerful? Especially when the effect of peoples' prayers isn't always so clear to us, why do we find solace in knowing that someone is praying with us in mind? What about these words is so comforting?

The conversations we have with G-d are our most intimate, honest, and real. The idea that someone else prays for you is the most meaningful sentiment because it means that deep in the hearts of the people around you, you exist in their most sacred conversation. It means that you appear in an encounter that is often highlighted by a person’s own personal dilemmas and pain.

When you are on the lips of people praying, dancing on the air that goes straight to G-d, you know that you don't have to tighten your shoulders and muster up the strength all by yourself. The world knows your falling, and they're asking G-d to help lift you up.

When it was time to address the students of Virginia Tech directly, the Presidents words were more eloquent. President Bush informed the students, saying, "People of every faith have lifted you up in prayer. People who have never met you are praying for you. They're praying for your friends who have fallen and are injured. There is a power in these prayers, a real power.”

In addition to his own words, the president read a letter from a V-Tech student, beseeching of his fellow students and neighbors to “ache on behalf of those people that had lost a loved one.”

When we're in pain, we don't always want the whole world to be aching, too. But sometimes, when they ache for us, the pain is a little less sharp. And when we direct that cry upwards, we are all lifted, and the future looks a little less daunting.

Knowing that we exist in someone else personal conversation with their Maker reminds us that we're all connected and look towards the same thing to replenish our strength, and there is nothing more healing than that.

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[ Click here and scroll down to see a profile of one of the victims, Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who was a professor at V-Tech. On Holocaust Remembrance day, he died protecting his students ]