Light and Joy in the midst of Darkness and Defeat
Patrick Edwards
Isaiah 9: 1-7
Introduction
On the morning of Friday, December 14, a young man of the age of 20 walked in to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where after already brutally murdering his mother that morning, he proceeded to murder 20 children and 6 teachers before taking his own life. For the past ten days now, as the Newton community and the nation alike have mourned this terrible and senseless tragedy, we have asked ''Why.'' Why has such an unimaginable and horrific event such as this happened?
Though the loss itself I can only imagine is difficult enough for the families of these victims to endure, how even more painful it must be for these parents that such an event would happen at Christmas. The other evening Teresa said to me, just how painful Christmas morning will be for these parents, who doubtlessly had already bought presents for their children, presents which will never be opened. What a world of darkness and defeat we seemingly live in.
You see, it doesn't take a mass shooting to tell us that we live in a world of darkness, that our world and all who dwell within are broken and defeated. This isn't the first horrific tragedy to occur in human history; sadly, such tragedies are innumerable across our world today.
Right now in our world today, in the country of Sudan, in a region called Darfur, a massive genocide has been taking place since 2003, where local militias have murdered over 480,000 native Darfurians in less than a decade. Likewise, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, civil war there has targeted civilians as the means of demonstration and intimidation. Somewhere near 5.4 million people have been murdered in this country since 1996. In Burma, the controlling government in an effort to ethnically cleanse their country has tortured, raped, and murdered nearly 200,000 innocent people. Need we remember the systematic genocide of six million Jews in Nazi Europe, and th ...
Patrick Edwards
Isaiah 9: 1-7
Introduction
On the morning of Friday, December 14, a young man of the age of 20 walked in to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where after already brutally murdering his mother that morning, he proceeded to murder 20 children and 6 teachers before taking his own life. For the past ten days now, as the Newton community and the nation alike have mourned this terrible and senseless tragedy, we have asked ''Why.'' Why has such an unimaginable and horrific event such as this happened?
Though the loss itself I can only imagine is difficult enough for the families of these victims to endure, how even more painful it must be for these parents that such an event would happen at Christmas. The other evening Teresa said to me, just how painful Christmas morning will be for these parents, who doubtlessly had already bought presents for their children, presents which will never be opened. What a world of darkness and defeat we seemingly live in.
You see, it doesn't take a mass shooting to tell us that we live in a world of darkness, that our world and all who dwell within are broken and defeated. This isn't the first horrific tragedy to occur in human history; sadly, such tragedies are innumerable across our world today.
Right now in our world today, in the country of Sudan, in a region called Darfur, a massive genocide has been taking place since 2003, where local militias have murdered over 480,000 native Darfurians in less than a decade. Likewise, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, civil war there has targeted civilians as the means of demonstration and intimidation. Somewhere near 5.4 million people have been murdered in this country since 1996. In Burma, the controlling government in an effort to ethnically cleanse their country has tortured, raped, and murdered nearly 200,000 innocent people. Need we remember the systematic genocide of six million Jews in Nazi Europe, and th ...
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