rule #1

yesterday's most horrendous events keep coming back to me, landing with a thud in my gut. its so hard to reconcile what happened and faith (either in a merciful God or in humanity). i can not imagine feeling anything so intensely that killing 32 other people would make sense or in some way make whatever i was feeling better. it just can't add up. i do take comfort in knowing that God has promised to work all things for His glory, so i know that He will be working to comfort and minister to the people affected by this tragedy. and i know that the lives that were lost yesterday were lived according to his purpose, and while i'm sure that they weren't all christian, i know that their lives had meaning and that whatever they experienced yesterday was in the context of grace. there really is no way that such a tragedy can be explained.

which brings me to rule #1. my mother always says that the first thing that most people do when they feel threatened or angry or really almost anything is to find someone to blame. and i am abundantly sure that finding someone to blame really is not going to help this situation, nor do i believe that its likely to help in the future. so you think that the school officials should have closed the campus or put it on lock-down following the 1st shooting... if they had thought in any way, shape, or form that the massacre that would take place 2 hours later was a realistic possibility (or a possibility at all), wouldn't they have done something? to say that they have "blood on their hands" is inflammatory and hurtful. the people who lead that school (and most schools, i'd be willing to venture) clearly care enormously not only about the school as an institution, but also about their faculty and staff (who may have been colleagues or even themselves in other scenarios) and their students, not to mention their own reputations. to imply in any way that they should have seen this coming is to ask some members of our society to have super powers. i am confident that they wish that they could have done something to prevent what happened also, but i join with them in their grief, not in our tendency to cast blame. besides, it is way way way too premature to speculate about what could have been done. we don't know the shooter's motive, we don't know his circumstances, and we yet even know the names of the victims. i propose that we join with the family, friends, and others who have been affected by this event, pray for them, mourn with them, and wait for understanding. if a finger needs to be pointed at anyone, i return to the verse that instructs me to get the plank out of my own eye before the speck out of my neighbor's eye.