Newtown Shooting

     We are in a war that we don’t understand.  We can’t wrap our heads around the fact that people could walk into an elementary school and shoot children dead for no apparent reason.  It defies common decency, logic, and rationality.  Yet today in Newtown Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary School a shooter shot and killed twenty children and six adults before turning the gun on himself.  A city mourns, our heart goes out to them; parents worst fears are realized and our heart bleeds for them.  Today our world got a little bit smaller and our safety was completely destroyed.  Now the questions ring out.  How do we fight this war when we know not our enemy?  Are we to hide away in our homes, in fear, in the belief that those walls will keep us safe?  Is there not a safe harbor; any where?  How can we answer these simple questions.  All I can do is shake my head in disbelief.

     It’s the parents job to keep his/her child safe.  As a parent, you send your child to school with no after thought because they're in school and thus they're safe.  You no longer worry about them because you know where they are and that you will see them when you get home from work.  Today in Newtown that won’t happen for some families.  Families will mourn for years for this life that ended in such a cruel and thoughtless way.  Their lives are forever changed because some one decided that his life wasn't worth living and made the selfish decision to take a few people with him.  I can not imagine their grief and I pray to God that I never have to.

     Are we to install metal detectors at the doors of every school now?  Is that what we need and will that do it?  Must we look deeper at the why’s and the how’s?  How is it that someone gets to the point that life has no meaning at all?  How can you look a small child, that wouldn't hurt a fly, in the face and shoot them dead? How can you be so cold?  What broke inside this young man that made him do this terrible deed.  Why did this happen to these children and to this town?  When will we start to value life again?
     We all watch the television and on the news from time to time we see suicide bombers that go into crowds of people and blow themselves up killing men, woman, and children.  We think to ourselves, "how crazy is that?"  We some how look down on those people because they have been fighting all their lives and we casually think, they don't know any better.  In our country, in America land of the free home of the brave, we have suicide bombers; who are killing men, woman, and children.  The question that all of us should be asking is, "what are we going to do about it?"

     Life is so very precious and it is such a blessing to be able to share your life with your family, be grateful today that you have your family in your life and that they are all safe.  Because today someone wont get that same blessing.