These Children Are Our Children

I don’t have the vocabulary to express what I want to today. My heart is grieved, as I know is yours.

Tears and groanings are our words today; They are our insufficient prayers.

These children are our children, and so we grieve.

I’m simply repeating here what I wrote after the Aurora shooting a few months ago–amplified with deep mourning and prayers for these precious innocent lives lost, and for the families who will have an empty stocking at Christmas, an empty chair at dinner tonight, and empty beds with stuffed animals that belong in little arms.

In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis describing the Motivation of Evil writes, “None ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong–only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him….Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.”

Whatever motivation the shooter had, we know it was parasitic and evil — nothing original, valiant, or special. And therefore we won’t allow him to turn our gaze from the precious lives lost, from our righteous anger, from our grief.

These children are our children, and so we grieve.