God is still GOOD

Where do you start praying after a day like today?

For the families who suffered a loss so great that there isn't a word to define a parent who has grieved a child?

For the children whose nights will be filled with dreams of gunshots and fallen classmates?

Or perhaps for the men who have the job of entering that classroom and picking up the littlest of bodies?

Maybe a prayer for the new principal and teachers who will continue on at the school while fighting the horror that will surely permeate the mind, heart and soul of all who enter?

I just don't know where to begin and how to get the words just right.....because there is so much to pray for.

But I do know this.

God is still GOOD and RIGHTEOUS.

It pains me to read commentary reflecting on an apparently "obvious" absence of God when this maniac fought his way into an elementary school and murdered a classroom full of first graders.

"Where was God?"

"Why didn't He stop this from happening?"

From my years of religious education.....human beings are not puppets.  We have been given a body, brain and soul to use here on Earth in addition to free will AND the Bible.  I have the choice to follow the word of God or to engage in sinful behavior.

God never said that life here on Earth would be free from unspeakable tragedy or heart-wrenching pain and suffering.  In fact, he pretty much assures us that just by the very nature of being human there is no doubt that we WILL encounter those things but then in the same breath He reminds us that through all the bad, He is still GOOD.

My faith has not been shaken.  My belief is still strong.

On Friday night I hugged my baby girl on the couch and sobbed for those mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers who will spend the rest of their lives with a piece of their family puzzle missing.  The first responders who had to uncover the carnage and the children who ran fearfully from their school building.  The family of the shooter because their grief is the loneliest of all.

God is still GOOD and RIGHTEOUS.  Humans are fallible and sinful.

The horrific events that unfolded on Friday were an act of an evil human, not of a vengeful or spiteful God.