I am spent with grief on account of the shooting last evening in Omaha. I am sure it will find its way into my sermon somehow (the rough draft of which is at Share It, in the Sermon Feedback Cafe). Something like, "they shall not hurt or destroy either on the holy mountain or the Great Plains."
I feel so sorry for the shooter who, as the news reports this morning, spent several months "in the fetal position chewing his fingernails." That, apparently, because of "problems" with his stepmother. Sounds like Walt Disney gone horribly wrong. So he loses his girl and he loses his dead-end job, and that makes him dead-end people he did not even know: so many others now have lost their girls and guys.
"Now I am going to be famous," he says, and when and where and why did it happen than our disaffected came to imagine that this is the way to be famous? Then again, in the ethos of American Idol, perhaps if you can't sing you shoot.
And why was his landlady not alarmed? A sad and bitter child showing off his assault weapon?
I pray for the dead and their families. They were doing their Christmas shopping. Got up yesterday morning and dressed and had lunch and went shopping for their kids, their grandkids, their parents, their spouses. A nice afternoon at the mall, feeling the Christmas spirit. They had no reason, nor did their families, to expect that this Advent would be any different than any other, except for this other advent--this dark coming of this poor, blind soul and his assault rifle.
And so I recall, somewhat eerily, the Gospel text from last week: two were in the boys department, and one was taken; two were trying on shoes and one was taken; but know this, that if any of them had known at what time the boy was coming they would have stayed awake or stayed away and not let the thief into the mall.
Especially so, come quickly, please, Lord Jesus.
1 comment:
I really related to this post, as we are just a couple of miles from New Life Church which, as you know, experienced its own shooting recently. My children have been to that church many times and have several friends who are members there... it frightened them so deeply, to see that they are not safe even in the House of God, to have to realize at the tender ages of 8 and 10 that the safety this world offers is a sham. To have to reach deep inside them for a stronger faith, to hold on to Jesus and know that they are eternally safe with Him, to try and believe that when it really doesn't make any sense. I am so heartbroken at how frightening this world is for our children. And that this world is so awful for some children that they grow up and go on shooting rampages. I don't honestly know how people who don't believe in Jesus deal with this stuff.
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