The Love of God

The pain and loss is unbearable to imagine.

How could this happen again? How could it happen to small, beautiful, innocent children? How could a loving God stand by and let it all happen?

I could say that there are a whole lot of guns out there. I could say that we have a broken mental-health system. I could say that this will happen again.

But when you are the parent, the spouse or the child of someone that died in the horrific shootings in Newtown, CT, on Friday, I don’t know how much those sentiments matter at this point.

I can't bring myself to watch television news coverage of the shootings. I gave up on cable news during the Anna Nicole Smith madness of 2007.

Instead, I go to the New York Times and The Washington Post for accurate stories about the tragedy.

I go to my blog list for insight and direction on how to process it all. Two sites you should definitely check out are Child Psych Mom and Mom Heart Online.

 

And I seek God for hope and comfort because my faith is shaken and weak. I find myself asking the haunting questions so many grapple with when something like this happens. Reading my daily prayers yesterday morning brought anger, not comfort.  It wasn’t until last night, as I began praying for protection over my children, that I began to soften.

And I’m sure that like many of you, I’ve found myself hyper-sensitive to my children’s needs, wishes and mere presence these past two days. I’ve given in to their requests that I might normally try to put off. I’ve offered more hugs. I was unwilling to move a muscle as I watched them talk and laugh with each other.

Brother Charles, the junior pastor at our church, said something this morning at the end of his sermon that stuck with me. He was encouraging the congregation to let God’s love be visible through us. As I’ve pondered that today, I realized his simple advice may be the best I’ve heard since Friday. For in the horrifying reality and evil of what happened, the best way to hold onto my faith, and maybe, just maybe, strengthen it in others, might be to purposefully do things to make God's love more visible than the darkness that threatens to overshadow it all.