The day started out as an ordinary Friday. In fact, the sun was shining as it softened the hard, Connecticut snow. That morning, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, all was not as it seemed from outsiders as they drove by on their way to someplace else. The attractive building was in Newtown, an affluent community in southern Connecticut.
I was in a hair salon, some 20 miles away, when the story broke. While I was getting my hair done, I heard the carefully measured voice of a newscaster from the mounted TV, a few feet away from where I sat. Some of the women were already on their cell phones, rising panic evident in their voices. I listened with heightened concentration as the details gradually unfolded.
A young man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School. Within minutes, students and teachers were held captive while the stranger opened fire on first and second grade students. In a remarkably short time, 20 children and six staff members were brutally murdered. Twenty-six families were tom apart by tragedy, eleven days before Christmas.
How many gifts had been wrapped for children who would not be there to tear them open on Christmas morning? How many church services and family gatherings would be marked by their absence? Furthermore, what would the holy season be like for the rest of the lives of those who had lost a child, a sibling, a parent, a friend?
Heartache abounds in this life. While there are incomparable moments of grace and beauty, there is the striking counterpoint of pain that takes our breath away. So, this blog is birthed out of a desire to address the wonder and wreckage of life on this troubled planet, from a Christian perspective.
This perspective, empowered as it is from the belief in God’s eternal plan, is the only one that can provide healing to the lonely heart and to the unspeakable pain that only Christ can ease.
The Lord created us with a purpose. Our goal then, is to find that purpose. “We often feel tired, not because we’ve done too much, but because we’ve done too little of what sparks a light in us”, written by Alexander Den Heijer.
What is your purpose today? It is my hope and prayer that this short book might be instrumental in helping you find it.
‘For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ” 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
