The Archbishop of Glasgow Philip Tartaglia, will today hold a mass for the victims of the Glasgow's George Square accident, in which shoppers were mown down by a runaway bin lorry. He will try to find words of comfort for the mourners, of course, but he will also have to say something that speaks both to practising Christians and to the wider world.
He will be judged rigorously – harshly, even. What might be meaningful to Christians often sounds like religious platitudes to non-believers, but at times like this it is vital that the idea of faith is translated into a language the faithless can hear at least without scorn.
Christian leaders have a particular responsibility in these situations, because their words are widely heard and reported. Most of us, though, at some point, will be faced with someone else's pain and feel that we have to do or say something.
However, in the face of all our instincts, and in spite of the multifarious resources available to today's would-be defender of the faith, there are moments when the wisest thing to do is to lower the expectations of those who will hear us.
What happened in George Square was a terrible, terrible accident. It gains added poignancy from the fact that those who died or have suffered life-changing injuries were engaged in the utterly harmless pursuit of Christmas shopping. We like to say that a single candle can dispel the deepest dark: here, it is as though darkness visible has quenched the light.
So we must not try to fob people off with words of facile spiritual optimism. We cannot simply talk, for instance, of it 'all being in God's plan'. Even if a rationale could be found for such a statement, it is set up to invite rejection.
Neither should we be too quick to point to the healing that comes with time, the blessings of friendship, the memories of happiness and the comforts of faith. These things might all be true, but not yet.
The most that the words of Christian leaders can do in these situations is create a small shelter in which faith, which for many is a fragile plant, can survive in the most inhospitable climate imaginable. There is no explaining what has happened, not to the satisfaction of those who mourn and not to the satisfaction of those who look on from the outside, with a detached but critical eye, waiting for the weaknesses of the Church's creed to reveal themselves.
But it is possible to say enough to allow the idea of faith to remain not wholly unimaginable, not quite intellectually bankrupt, not quite morally obscene. It is conceivable – just – that a frail thread which leads through the labyrinth of loss to the throne of God might survive unbroken.
We will not preserve it by offering too many answers. We might preserve it, though, if we try to hear Scripture, as far as we can, as it is. If we do this, we find that human grief is expressed unrestrainedly, for example in the Psalms, with God himself the target of accusation and reproach; it's in the Bible, and it must be alright. We find that the best comforters are those who say the fewest words: Job's three friends do best when they sit with him in silence and things start to go wrong the moment they open their mouths. We find that Jesus' words on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" have the ring of deep and personal truth.
None of these are examples of questions asked and answered. They are, however, examples of questions asked and silence accepted; God's silence accepted in the context of an experience of his love and faithfulness which is too deep to be cancelled by a terrible thing happening.
Belief in a good and loving God sometimes goes with the evidence; it is what life seems to confirm for us. Sometimes it goes against it.
At a time like this, it is the dictum of Richard Dawkins that "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference" that may carry the most instinctual conviction.
It is the profoundly challenging task of those who speak for the gospel to deny this, with grace, conviction and compassion, to say: "No, I do not understand and will not pretend to explain, but the universe has a heart, and God is love."
