How could this happen? How could we let this happen? Didn't his mother know he was ill, know that a home with mental illness inside is not a place for guns? Were security procedures followed? Was he seeing a therapist or counselor who should have known he was a danger? How will shattered families be made whole? Will the world ever feel safe again? Where is peace?
In all of these questions, we really just ask this one: Where is God? Where is God when innocents are slaughtered, when madness goes unnoticed until it is too late, when the world turns upside down? Where in God's name is God?
Immortal Babe, who this dear day
Didst change thine heaven for our clay,
And didst with flesh thy godhead veil,
Eternal Son of God, all hail!
The answer, whether in verse (this one from the Bishop of Exeter in the 1600's), or in a word (Emmanuel) is...God with us. When we suffer, when we mourn, when we give in to despair --- somehow, someway, God with us. There may be unanswered questions, and asking them may rend our hearts. But the answer to THE question, the one that vanishes our loneliness and fears, is just this: God is with us, in the middle of our mess, our sorrow, our anguish.
Emmanuel --- God with us.
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