On Friday afternoon I spent some time watching the news
reports coming out of Newtown, Connecticut.
After a while of watching the coverage, I cried. I didn’t cry the nice
roll-down-your-cheek-controlled tears.
Rather I cried the really messy hysterical type of tears where it seems
like a whole box of tissues might be required.
My heart ached.
I was really upset.
Upset that there are families mourning.
Upset that little children have to see and hear and experience such
tragedy and violence. Upset that bad
things happen. Upset that being
completely innocent doesn’t protect first graders from violence. I think many people around the country and
around the world have been just as deeply upset as I have been.
My prayers have been filled with prayers for the grieving
families. I have been begging God to
comfort the families of the victims, especially the mothers and fathers of
those children. I have asked God to have
mercy on us, to have mercy on a country in which violence happens far too
often. I have implored God to give us
all the wisdom to know what steps to take next.
These have been incredibly emotional prayers. I’ve prayed harder and longer in the past
couple of days than I have in a long time.
The only comfort I can find is to know that God mourns for
those families in Connecticut. God feels the grief of the mothers and fathers
of those children. And God sees the pain
of the whole world. God sees the mother
in Uganda who mourns the death of her toddler from malaria. God hears the wails of the father in Iraq
when his young daughter dies from a bomb in their neighborhood. God knows the suffering a grandmother in
Haiti feels when her grandson dies from starvation. God is the only one who could possibly
comfort all those who mourn.
We turn to prayer in this time of tragedy and great sadness,
but we each know that something must be done.
We know that this is not the way the world is supposed to be. It may not be clear at this point what
exactly needs to be done to put an end to violence and the death of innocent
children in our country and around the world.
There are certainly a lot of valid ideas out there.
David Starr Jordan said, "Wisdom is knowing what to do
next; virtue is doing it."
In reality we need a little bit of a mix of wisdom and
virtue today. We need to start trying
some of the ideas out there, evaluate what works and what doesn’t and then try
something that may get us closer to a solution.
The only way anything is going to change is if you and I
demand that something change. Children
will continue dying from violence unless we continually make an intentional
effort to change mindsets, to change hearts, and to change priorities. Change does not come easy and there are no
easy solutions to stop violence in our world.
Therefore, each of us must do something tomorrow and the next day and
the day after that... We cannot simply
talk about how we need our lawmakers to do something, we must continually ask
our lawmakers to do something while also doing whatever we can ourselves to
change our families, our communities, our culture, our country, and ultimately
our world. The future of our children
and our world depends on us.
May God grant us the wisdom to know what to do next and grant the
virtue to do it. And may God give us the
hope to see beyond today, to see a day when violence and death have been
overcome.
Let it be so.
