There are just some things children should never see.
Unfortunately for those who attend Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newton, Ct. they now have not only seen them but will have them burned in their memories for the better part of their lives. Being escorted by police, stepping over bodies of dead classmates, trying to avoid stepping in pools of blood, and simply getting out of your schoolhouse and back to the safety of the arms of a parent--would be trauma enough--even without the violent screams of terror and gunshot that preceded it.
The innocence of a child is one of those true gifts in life.
Their ability to see the beauty in things that adults grow hardened towards is a joy that seems limitless. The wide-eyed wonder of those early years of life is something our culture seems insistent on robbing from them earlier each year. But in the face of sheer evil that wonder begins to be erased all together. When that innocence is robbed from them, the effects of it suddenly being gone--particularly earlier in life than it should be--scars will likely be left on their souls that they may never heal from.
Or so it seems...
Friday morning 20 families dropped off their babies at Sandy Hook, that did not come home with them that night. Nor will they ever again. The holes in the hearts of these families are never made whole. The pain, though it subsides over time, is never fully eliminated.
The mommies who had carefully wrapped a special present and put it under the tree with the joy of giving it to them and to see their face glow on Christmas morning, will discover that moment will forever be in want.
And all the potential of those 20 lives--mowed down as pieces of grass--will forever be withheld from the world's pool of talent. The future contributions each of these young minds, lives, bodies, and hands could create, produce, originate or innovate--society has lost.
Another particularly harsh reality that will set in will be the horrific blame-placing one parent will do to another. Why hadn't they decided to go ahead and keep that child home this morning, he or she told us they weren't feeling well? And if history is any teacher, several of these families or marriages will dissolve because of the unbearable trauma it is to endure when a parent buries their child.
God never intended that reality.
The unfiltered evil on display Friday morning occurred in "the safest place in the entire world," according to those from Newton. It is by most accounts, "an adorable little town."
Then there is the one truly at fault--the one who pulled that trigger. The heart that was bathed, lathered, and soaked in the molestation of a satanic force until it had marinated to a murderous forte, killed unrepentantly, and with no mercy for the innocent. Selfishness screamed louder than selflessness, and the results of such thinking, is a path of abject destruction.
Oddly it is that very presence of evil, and more specifically the identification of it by any who observed, that also points to mankind's greatest hope.
For evil personified can not exist in this reality or any other without an equal level of good also existing.
It's a yin and yang.
We only understand the horror of evil because of the presence of good we have also seen, witnessed to, felt for ourselves. But if evil is real then there is no need to argue anything - good must also be as well. Logic tells us this, no matter what the social engineers, veiled as university academics try to tell us in this post-Freudian age. There is right and wrong, immoral and moral, and there was no confusion about what was what this week at the Sandy Hook elementary school.
That good that is present is also an objective form of good, something elevated above all we can see,
We commonly call him GOD!
And that God knows something of the suffering those families face this day.
For he lost His son.
Not due to a lone, crazed gunman, but to an angry, illogical, dishonest mob.
Not because of the sin of one, but because of the sin of every-one.
Yours, mine, all of them.
I have no answer tonight for the one question every family member is begging an answer to. In this life, and on this earth we likely will never have an answer as to, "why?"
But I know this: God is.
He is not mocked. And as we sow, He reminds us, we also reap!
What are we sowing? Is it wisdom? Is it truth? Is it honor? Will it heal the riff between a troubled man and his mother? Will it stop anger before it explodes?
God take mercy on us, though we do not deserve it.
Show us the way home, obliterating confusion and helping to walk with clarity--in truth--a little bit more--each day!