News
Editorial: There is no explanation
Scott Wagar
12/18/2012
As I sit quietly this weekend and looking out the window at all of the frost surrounding me, I’m thinking about Christmas and the school shooting at Sandy Hook which took place this past Friday in Newtown, Conn.
Christmas is just right around the corner and I should be feeling the holiday spirit, but with this recent mass shooting in an elementary school it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.
When it comes to the Newtown incident, I really do not know what to say, or perhaps because it is so terrible, I don’t know how to say it. I certainly do not have all the facts of this horrible event, I am not a psychiatrist or counselor who can help in these situations, and gun laws just baffle me because they seem out of control at the moment.
In reality, what can one say about this event that we all haven’t heard a thousand times already as school shootings, mall shootings, and shootings in general continue to take place in our country.
It is even really more difficult to explain because it involves children. Like the Amish one-room school house shooting which took the lives of five young school girls in 2006, this time 20 children between the ages of six and seven were taken from their families, friends, schoolmates, teachers and an entire community that now will never be the same again.
And, we cannot forget the six adults in the school who made every attempt to protect the children in the bravest manner.
How can anyone explain this? It’s impossible, absolutely impossible. There is no explanation when a person walks into a school setting and starts shooting, no explanation while young children had to have their lives taken from them in such a tragic manner, no explanation as to why parents no longer have their children with them, there is, sadly, no explanation.
As I continue to look out the window, the fog has thickened, the sky is darker and the frost is heavier. Like the weather outdoors, it is the way I feel inside emotionally. And yet, in this deeply troubled time in our country’s history, thoughts of Christmas are in my mind because to me Christmas is about the baby Jesus, a child born into a world of sin, who came to this earth to bring the gift of salvation to the world. The Sandy Hook incident, and Christmas on my mind, makes me think of the Bible verse from Acts 5:31, “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is He.”
It is hard to think about Christmas after Newtown, Conn., but I feel Christmas is important right now with what has happened this past week at Sandy Hook, because the true meaning of Christmas is salvation and peace on earth; and, these are two things we need in our nation right now with another school shooting in our corner of the world.