First and foremost, let us lift those struck by this tragic shooting in prayer.
Heavenly Father, please be with the parents, teachers, students and others directly and indirectly affected by this evil act. Grant them comfort. Grant them peace. Let your truth shine through to lift them up. Shower them with your love. Give them the strength to move forward. In the name of your only begotten Son and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah, Amen.
As we pick ourselves up from the stunning blow of this massacre of students and teachers at the Robb Elementary School in in Ulvalde Texas, many of us have one question in mind… WHY? Other questions follow. How could this happen? Could it be prevented? How could a Holy God who loves us allow such a thing to happen? All of these questions deserve an answer. All of the answers point to a single cause and a single solution. The cause is evil. The solution is God.
God?!!! God couldn’t stop this! Some may say. If God wanted to prevent this, He could have – IF He really is “all powerful”! Both responses cannot be true. Choose.
“God couldn’t stop this.” Oh really? Let’s suppose those who say this are correct. If this is true then God is NOT all powerful or all knowing. Such a god is weak and ineffective. Such is not a god I would care to worship nor trust.
What about “IF God is “all powerful and all knowing” and He loves us… WHY did He allow this to happen”? In a word… evil. Get this straight, GOD is NOT evil. GOD is good. Always. Evil exists in this world at this present time to allow US to choose and many of us choose evil over a holy and loving God time and time again.
At this juncture, someone is sure to claim I am saying the sins of the parents of these murdered children are to be blamed for this awful act. No. I do not. Neither do I blame the children themselves. They were innocent. Every. Single. One. Evil knows no bounds. Evil follows no rules. It is not beyond evil to slaughter children, to spill innocent blood. This is the essence of evil.
This nation, our Constitutional Republic established and blessed by God Almighty, has rejected this same God and embraced evil. Consider the Hebrews. They turned away from the very God who rescued them from Egypt and sent them bread from heaven. Instead they chose to worship a false deity. Likewise we reject God Almighty to worship evil.
Look around you. Evil is everywhere. Christians, my brethren in Christ, commit adultery and divorce on an equal scale with non-believers. Many who claim Christ embrace illicit sex, abortion, perversion, theft, lying, slavery, human trafficking and more. Our glorious Super Bowl, the crown jewel of US sports, is purported to be the heyday for human trafficking. We Christians are not alone.
Ghislaine Maxwell, recently convicted of trafficking children for sexual predators now resides in prison. Not one of those who received a child from her for sexual exploitation has been charged. Not. A. Single. One. Where are the tears for these children? Where is the outrage? Where is the demand for justice? Are we a godly people? Are we even a decent people? You tell me.
No doubt, those children who died at Uvalde will be received into heaven. I expect most, if not all, of those who were trafficked by Maxwell continue to live with the horrors they faced to this day. Which group received mercy?
This is no time to blame but rather a time to search our own souls. What have I done to thwart evil? How have I turned from a living, loving God to embrace that which He abhors?
Who scoffs at God? You have your answers. Evil abounds. Look around you. If you can see no evil, look in the mirror. The eyes do not lie. We mourn for those lost at Uvalde and so we should. Who mourns for the other children lost on May 25? Or the day before, or the day before that, or today? I cannot tell you their names, but their loved ones are grieving too. Evil pervades.
Who mourns for those who are abused, sexually, mentally, physically, emotionally? Who mourns for those ill-treated in our nursing homes or our prisons? Who mourns for those ripped from mother’s wombs or for the mothers themselves? Surely some do, but how many celebrate these same things? How many turn a blind eye? Out of sight, out of mind.
Evil abounds. Politicians are openly and brazenly corrupt. No one questions the Speaker of our House of Representatives when she is accused of insider trading. No one charges politicians or their minions when evidence of crimes surface. No one holds our vaunted media accountable for their own lies as they turn from a bastion of light to a political propaganda machine.
As a nation, we citizens are at least as corrupt as those we chose to represent us. Consider those words. We choose them to REPRESENT us. Not just one time but again and again. It has been pointed out that when one chooses the lessor of two evils, one still chooses evil. We choose evil. We embrace it. We celebrate it. If those who represent us are evil what does this say about us?
If you truly want evil to stop, you must turn from it and turn back to our Holy God. You must reject evil at every point, on every level. You cannot serve God and mammon.
The boy, I’ll not call him a man, who instigated the massacre at Ulverde, Texas, was evil incarnate – evil in the flesh. He was the manifestation of the evil pervading our nation. He lived among us for eighteen years. He attended our schools, shopped in our stores and walked on our streets. He did not simply decide on May 24, 2022 to shoot his grandmother before opening fire at Robb Elementary School. This took time, a lifetime. His lifetime. His final actions were the sum total of everything that happened to him, everything he experienced in his life. They were the culmination of a life lived in an evil land. Our land. It need not be this way.
Let this event, this massacre, be a turning point for us. Let is turn from evil and turn to a Holy, Almighty God.