After the devastating
events that took place yesterday I found myself perplexed, saddened, and angry.
The thought of my own daughter or son being a victim in such a crime crippled
my heart. I cannot even begin to understand what the parents must be going through. I can only offer prayers to God knowing that he is with them through all their pain
and loss. My heart is broken over their loss. Please join me in praying for
these families.
Following the events at
Newtown social platforms lit up! The majority of posts on Facebook were
positive and prayerful, but I also saw an increasingly saddening trend.
Multiple friends started posting to this effect that “Newtown happened because
prayer was taken out of the schools.” Others took the “liberty” to exploit the situation
and promote their own views on gun laws--both tactless and callous. These
situations do not call for a time of “I told you so,” but instead empathy,
reflection and prayer. Christ came into this world with every right to claim,
“I told you so,” but instead humbled and gave himself up that we might have
life.
This
is a time to remember that every wrong and evil in this world will one day be
finally dealt with in such a way that “he will wipe every tear from their eyes”
and “comfort
the mourners.”
This
is a time to honor the lives of those lost in this tragedy while at the same
time neither diminishing the evil done or blaming society. It is a time to take
serious the call to “love your neighbors,”
both
the victims and perpetrators, with the love of Christ. It is a call to be the
people of God in a world that is so obviously and desperately in a need of the
one who embodies peace itself.
It is
an opportunity to love and not to just be “right.” I encourage all Christians
to take a humble position in this tragedy (and in all of life), not seeing this as an
opportunity to point blame or spread their own social agenda, but to mourn with
those who mourn and offer hope to those who are in need.
- Pastor Mark
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