This morning while going over my email I read a little poem referring to the children lost in the recent school shooting in Connecticut. My chest was instantly filled with a crushing feeling and it won't go away.
When things like this happen we are shocked. But perhaps as Canadians we are somewhat disconnected from the sheer magnitude of this monstrous act because it happened in another country. A country that unfortunately has a history of this kind of violence.
But when we think in terms of those innocent children there are no borders to this atrocity. Even soldiers in the cruelest of hateful conflicts respect the lives of little children. This crime is beyond comprehension; seemingly beneath the evil that lines the hubs of Hell itself.
This kind of occurrence sends folks spinning for answers. Gun control, school security, you name it. Perhaps all of these components have some bearing on how this murderous tragedy came to pass. But the biggest issue for me - and it should be for you - is that this incident is a signpost for our times.
There is something gravely askew in a society where children are not safe in school. Lunch box in hand and braids in their hair; they knew not what was in store for them that hateful morning.
Something - or a sequence of somethings - has caused the wheels to fall off this machine we call civilization. Who kills children? Who or what demon puts this thought in someone's head?
I don't have these answers other than this is evil at it's rock bottom. An evil that has germinated and grown like a weed in our messed-up society.
What I do know is that our world needs God now more than ever. A God that loves, reveres and protects little children.
This Christmas remember to take a moment and ponder the baby that the season is all about. God in infant form came as a remedy, or an alternative, to evil. Our world needs to get back to those things that Jesus taught. The message of love he spread along the path 2000 years ago still works. Still contains the remedy to all the evil that haunts and consumes our world.
No you and I can't fix Conneticut. But we can fix ourselves. We can clean up our community, our own backyard, by starting with our own hearts.
This Christmas do it for the children. Those children. Our children. Because this world will someday be theirs - and I want it to be a better place.
And perhaps that crushing feeling will one day not be so bad.
