Last Friday, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut; Adam Lanza brutally murdered 26 persons, 20 of them children between the ages of six and seven years old. This event followed a shooting that occurred a few days earlier in which a shooter murdered two persons at a shopping mall in Portland Oregon. This one could have been a whole lot worse, given the estimated 10,000 shoppers who were present.
These incidents are happening much too often in America. At the current trend, it’s possible that massacres will become so commonplace that we may actually become numb to the shock of events such as last Friday's incident. Speaking at an interfaith prayer vigil in Newtown, President Obama said, "We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end."
It will be interesting to see what our leaders in Washington and at the state level comes up with. I just read in the news that schools are already beefing up security as a result of the recent atrocity. Personally, I believe our policemen and other security forces do an excellent job in trying to keep us safe. But to people of faith, I want to add that in these increasingly evil days, we need to pursue God’s protection as well.
Presently, we don’t know what drove Adam Lanza to carry out such heinous crime against his innocent victims. Among the possibilities are mental instability, drugs, emotional overload, or demonic activity. The point is that there are so many things that can drive people to do the insane things they are currently doing. You just don’t know who is who anymore. And no place is off limits to the evils of our day. But God and His ability to protect us are wherever we are.
As far as divine protection goes, my favorite chapter in the Bible is Psalm 91. It declares that when we make God our refuge, we don’t have to fear the evil around us: “You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday” (verses 5 and 6). It’s time for us to stop just reading the Bible and start actually believing it and trusting that God can and will do what He promises, if we trust Him.
God does not micromanage everything that happens in our world. Because He is sovereign, some things happen that we can’t fully explain. But Psalm 91 declares that God has the power to protect us. “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways” (verse 11). So Let us not live in fear; rather, let us face the evils of our day in faith, knowing that God is our keeper.
Copyright © 2012 by Frank King. All rights reserved.
2 comments:
Quite a sad and unfortunate incident. I can only imagine the pain that the bereaved parents and families are going through. Something needs to be done about the possession of guns by the public. At the same time, we all need to pray and ask for God's protection and guidance every day wherever we are, for we are living in evil times and there are brutal people everywhere. Last week a friend of my Mum was brutally murdered in the evening as he went about his business of carrying passengers on his motorbike. He was found the next morning with his head smashed using stones and the motorbike missing. It is suspected that the person he was carrying at the time had something to do with it.
Sorry to hear about that incident. I am really interested in seeing if serious discussion takes place in the way of gun control laws in our country. Heretofore, most of our politicians have shown that they don't have the backbone to seriously address this subject. I say that because those who want to keep things as they are very vocal and they have some very deep pockets.
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