Christian, Homeschool graduate among Virginia Tech victims

“On her MySpace page, Lauren McCain listed “the love of my life” as Jesus Christ. Her family said the 20-year-old international studies major became a Christian some time ago…She was home-schooled and had worked at a department store for about a year to save money for college” (US and World News).

As has been true of other infamous tragedies such as Columbine, among the Virginia Tech students who were killed on April 16 was a young lady named Lauren McCain. Several articles giving clear testimony to her faith in Christ have appeared in the 30 hours since her death was confirmed on Tuesday.

“‘I can only imagine … how wonderful heaven will be,’” Lauren is quoted as writing in a friend’s birthday card. Her family is pointing to the Lord for their sufficiency as well: “Friends and family members read Bible verses, remembered McCain and prayed for the man who police say killed her and the others. ‘We grieve over our great loss, and yet find peace in the reality that God is worthy of our trust and we are sustained in our sorrow by that truth’” (Daily Press).

Read more at Pilot Online and sign the guestbook for Lauren’s parents.

Update: Thanks to JoAnna for information about another Christian young lady among the victims: Rachel Hill, 18. You can read about her here at the Times Dispatch. This quote is especially poignant:

“Rachael had a wonderful, close, loving relationship with her parents,” School Superintendent Clay Fogler wrote in a letter to the church community yesterday. “Any parent would have counted it a privilege to have called her their daughter.” Now, when he reads the C.S. Lewis quotation that Hill chose to appear under her yearbook photo, he sees it as almost prophetic: “God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”

You can see pictures here, which shows something we need to remember: these are girls just like us…whose lives were completed in God’s timing. It challenges me to live each day as if it were my last. We are not promised tomorrow.