Never is a problem more real than when it happens to us. Terrorism, death, and violence aren't real until we watch our own buildings collapse. Fear and uncertainty aren't real until we are banished from our rooms and the college campus we call home. The world, it seems, isn't real until we are forced into it by the turmoil and trouble that engulf this present age.

Looking over the first four issues of Chimes this year brings about a certain despair. The year began with optimism and hope; we applauded the expanded offerings in Chapel and the opportunities available with student organizations. The next week we wept with the nation, our front page a silhouette of prayer in response to unspeakable evil. We might have thought we recovered; in our third issue we cheered a popular music group and were excited about a major academic conference. But again this week we return to the depression as we lament our own collegiate sanctuary being pulled from underneath us for a cause none of us understands.

How can we make sense of all of this? The classical problem of evil is a paradox that has plagued philosophy and theology for ages. We wonder why we suffer endlessly while the world around us seems to take no notice. We examine our helpless state, and we cry for our losses.

In one sense, we have lost our innocence. Our national pride and solidarity came crashing down with 220 stories of concrete and steel. Our academic security and peaceable theocracy sustained a direct hit with the ring of a telephone.

In another sense, we have lost our freedom. The greatest casualty of the past few weeks has not been a human toll, but a toll on all humanity. The freedom to conduct our lives without fear has been stripped away from us.

Yet, from amongst the ashes of our losing battles, a stronger and higher resolve emerges. Heroic individuals dash into a collapsing inferno for want of nothing but safety of their neighbors. A community unites on the front steps of an administrative building to defiantly protest that not even threats of violence can overcome this institution.

We blaze the trail of our future only to look back and see our footprints in the past. From past to present we see clearly our progress, but in the future, all we see is our uncertainty.

So fear grips us, even more vividly today than the day before, because the unknown future swoops down upon us like a predator hunting its helpless prey. We cannot help but fear a future whose optimism is routinely and systematically torn from its solace.

C.S. Lewis once said in a letter, ``though we struggle against things because we are afraid of them, it is often the other way round--we get afraid because we struggle.''

We struggle because we are uncertain. We don't know what the future holds, but we look past the present with an expectation that there is a greater answer to our questions than the one we are currently being given.

Not all of this is bad. We reject the future in terms of its inevitability granted by the present. It is the mark of an exception people - few other nations in history have refused with our level of stubbornness to accept fear and war and terror as a normative state. We will not accept a petty street criminal's telephone harassment anymore than we will stand for our aircraft being used to murder our countrymen.

The events at Calvin and in our nation seem distant in the other's scope, but they are united by a common virtue. Courage and goodness come forth from both instances - in anger against loss, but defiance against evil.

Whether our future headlines continue to tell the story of our brokenness and sorrow, between the lines there will continue to exist the story of our courage and our faith.

Casualties are inevitable. As long as we struggle, we will fear. But we will continue, because God has instilled us as human beings with the knowledge that hope and love are the interminable qualities of our spirit.

We cannot stop fearing, and we cannot stop struggling. All we can do is look forward and trust that our path has been laid before us, and it is a road that leads from sea billows to the peaceful river.

``Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.''