As boys often wrestle and fight, "just being boys", sooner or later someone gets that unexpected "punch in the gut" -- you're not ready for it, it can knock the wind out of you, and leaves you gasping and trying to regain composure.
Friday morning's news from Sandy Hook Elementary was that type of moment.
Unexpected. Connecticut? An Elementary school? How many dead? Kids as victims?
And just like that, America and the world are watching the disaster, trying to catch their breath and trying to "understand" an unspeakable tragedy.
Understanding will not lead to understanding. Though reasons may surface and blame lain upon shooter and their "reasoning"--we will not be able to understand this. It didn't make Columbine any better, and didn't allow for any greater healing to know the hurt and sadness inside the hearts of the perpetrators of that day--it only increased our sadness. I saw Columbine within 5 years after their tragic day, and spoke with a neighbor of the school--5 years of information was not enough to heal his bewildered heart.
No, understanding will only lead to more questions--and that's not necessarily bad because those questions will create some important conversations and debates. Not everyone will be right in those debates--we will need to pray for wisdom in the decisions that are made through such debates, and the ever important ability to disagree without being disagreeable so we don't spawn more regrettable moments.
The important thing is that we not jump right to the debates, but first allow time for mourning. Parents with children should, like President Obama said, hug their own children a little tighter and stress their love for them. And we not directly linked to the tragedy should pray for a community and families who are shattered at the most difficult of times of the year: mourning will be the carol of Newton this Christmas morning.
Pray for those families to know comfort and resurrection hope. Pray for those teachers who bravely corralled and protected and calmed children behind locked doors and their own thumping hearts. Pray for the children who survived and how in the world will they walk through those doors next month or in any day to come.
Pray for the one, yetunnamed child (we now know it is an adult female), who somehow "survived" the precision of this unspeakable horror that claimed the lives of everyone else in those rooms. Though this child she will live, the weight of memory, sadness and fear cannot be measured. Pray for that child her, his parents, his future classmates and community--and when the name is released, write that name somewhere to remind yourself to pray again and again.
When I was 16, a freshman in high school, I received word of my cousin's death by "foul play", though no one was ever charged or tried for his beating and drowning. Every such tragic loss of young life by crime takes me back to my "punch in the gut". Twenty-four years later, I'm still healing and still learning to love and live better--a couple months ago at my 40th birthday, I was reminded that he did not get to experience that milestone, and I mourned his loss again.
My prayer for the Newton community is that they will experience divine and necessary comfort in the days to come--and that through this unspeakable pain, they will learn to live and love better, as living testimonies of what those young lives could have done and offered for our world.
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Egypt note: the first day of referendum voting on the proposed Constitution continues here. Things have been calm in our part of the city, though there are sporadic reports of violence throughout the country in relation to the voting. I will post a different report focusing on this weekend's events tomorrow...
Friday morning's news from Sandy Hook Elementary was that type of moment.
Unexpected. Connecticut? An Elementary school? How many dead? Kids as victims?
And just like that, America and the world are watching the disaster, trying to catch their breath and trying to "understand" an unspeakable tragedy.
Understanding will not lead to understanding. Though reasons may surface and blame lain upon shooter and their "reasoning"--we will not be able to understand this. It didn't make Columbine any better, and didn't allow for any greater healing to know the hurt and sadness inside the hearts of the perpetrators of that day--it only increased our sadness. I saw Columbine within 5 years after their tragic day, and spoke with a neighbor of the school--5 years of information was not enough to heal his bewildered heart.
No, understanding will only lead to more questions--and that's not necessarily bad because those questions will create some important conversations and debates. Not everyone will be right in those debates--we will need to pray for wisdom in the decisions that are made through such debates, and the ever important ability to disagree without being disagreeable so we don't spawn more regrettable moments.
The important thing is that we not jump right to the debates, but first allow time for mourning. Parents with children should, like President Obama said, hug their own children a little tighter and stress their love for them. And we not directly linked to the tragedy should pray for a community and families who are shattered at the most difficult of times of the year: mourning will be the carol of Newton this Christmas morning.
Pray for those families to know comfort and resurrection hope. Pray for those teachers who bravely corralled and protected and calmed children behind locked doors and their own thumping hearts. Pray for the children who survived and how in the world will they walk through those doors next month or in any day to come.
Pray for the one, yet
When I was 16, a freshman in high school, I received word of my cousin's death by "foul play", though no one was ever charged or tried for his beating and drowning. Every such tragic loss of young life by crime takes me back to my "punch in the gut". Twenty-four years later, I'm still healing and still learning to love and live better--a couple months ago at my 40th birthday, I was reminded that he did not get to experience that milestone, and I mourned his loss again.
My prayer for the Newton community is that they will experience divine and necessary comfort in the days to come--and that through this unspeakable pain, they will learn to live and love better, as living testimonies of what those young lives could have done and offered for our world.
-----------------------------------------------------
Egypt note: the first day of referendum voting on the proposed Constitution continues here. Things have been calm in our part of the city, though there are sporadic reports of violence throughout the country in relation to the voting. I will post a different report focusing on this weekend's events tomorrow...
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