silent night

The last 24 hours have done little to instill a sense of hope in this world.  Every network is covering the horror that enveloped a small community in mere seconds.   You can't hear about or watch something like this without somehow relating to the unimaginable grief of the families affected.

I have tuned in to CNN, Fox News and other agencies with live coverage.  I was drawn into the details, the possible scenarios, the back stories and the emerging personalities of this tragedy.  I have asked along with the journalists...

How could this ever happen? 

What makes a person do something so despicable to innocent children?

I have prayed and cried for the parents, the spouses, the siblings, and grandparents, aunts, uncles...

My heart aches for them.

My heart aches for us.

I've read numerous opinions of well-meaning people, trying to pin this on a rational cause...

* no prayer in the schools
* gun control
* violent videogames
* poor care and screening for mental health

I've read numerous opinions of well-meaning people, trying to prevent it from happening again...

* more gun control
* less gun control
* metal detectors in every school
* ban heavy metal music
* ban violence in the media

It's not going to work...

This side of eternity...it can't work.

Why?  Because evil exists.

It lurks in the minds of those that choose to believe that they will have significance if they commit a truly evil act.  It is fed by the biographies of others that have gone before them.

James Holmes...opened fire on a theatre of people watching The Dark Knight Rises...before killing himself

Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold...walked into a Colorado high school and gunned down random students...before killing themselves

Seung Hui Cho...Virginia Tech student, shot and killed 32 fellow students...before killing himself

The biographies are easy to find with one quick Google search.  They are easy to watch as day after day news agencies cover every detail of every case...often with possible scenarios, rather than actual truth.

It's food for the disturbed.  It nourishes the evil inside every deeply disturbed person with a sense that there is glory, power and fame attached to these acts.

We are feeding them.  Our hunger for breaking news, while it feeds our curiosity, it is feeding their cancer of evil.

So...I am going to stop.  I do not want to know the name of this murderer or any other.  Their names are crossed out in the list because that is exactly how I believe they need to be treated.

Crossed out
Obliterated
Erased

Not sensationalized.  Not glamorized.  Not immortalized

My focus will be on those families, and I don't need to see coverage of the funeral, or pictures of deep grief etched in the faces of mothers.  The love that I have for my own children is enough for me to understand that level of pain.  I pray for those mothers.  I cry with them.  I ask God to give them hope.

Shut off the television.
Turn off the news.

We know the story.  We know that children and others died and they shouldn't have.  That's all we need to know.

Silent night
Holy night
Sleep in heavenly peace