Uvalde, Texas is a small town. Perhaps many didn’t even know it existed until this week. I knew it did because when I lived in San Antonio, Texas for a portion of my life, I would sometimes visit Garner State Park in Uvalde around 90 miles away to enjoy nature and spend time with friends relaxing. After this week, the way I remember this town will change henceforth. We know about the mass shooting that took place there this week in a school and have also seen the pictures of the children who probably had no idea that day would be their last in our world. Adults were also killed by the shooter, but mostly children. I usually try to explain things in my own mind from a spiritual perspective. I thought about the following hymn written a long time ago.
Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
- Root and Woolston
Many
innocent children were killed. Why would someone do something so horrible?
Jesus once said: “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it
is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” I really can’t say
that I fully understand the passage, especially from Jesus’ point of view, but
I can easily assume the authors of the hymn were referencing it in their minds
while writing. I can hear words spoken, but it doesn’t mean I always understand
their meaning. Moreover, I don’t understand this evil act of murder. Recently,
in Buffalo, NY many adults were killed by another young shooter. Both
shootings, Uvalde, and Buffalo, were acts of evil and manifestations of evil.
Tragic! Why? Why are so many of these types of incidents happening lately? What's
wrong? These are just a few relevant questions we should be asking, and we are
indeed asking them.
Both
shooters were unhappy about something and decided to attack and kill others,
perhaps blaming them for his condition or problems. If this was the case, one
could argue that these young men were not very spiritual, but what does that
really mean? If one Googles the definition of spirituality, the following
definition might appear: the quality
of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical
things…. This simple definition alone seems to justify that the problem we
have in these types of cases may be mainly spiritual. A friend recently wrote
something on social media in which he basically said something similar about this problem in our society. Bottom line, we have a spiritual
problem. We can create all the policies we want with relevance to guns, but if we
don’t take care of problems such as mental illness and having more spiritually
based priorities in our lives, we will often allow and provide a venue for evil
to perform. How do we become more spiritual? Prayer is often the best way to
start. Jesus said: "...one who believes in me will also do the works
that I do and, in fact, will do greater works...." If we can do
greater things, we can start by loving more…loving all the little children and
everyone (because little children become adults). It is as simple as that to start
(just do it)! Going out to purchase an illegal weapon and scheming a mass
shooting took a lot more effort for the shooter than making the decision to
pray for all, including those who may have hurt him. However, was he ever
taught this? Did he know about loving our neighbor as ourselves? Was he taught
to pray for his enemies and those who perhaps persecuted him? Maybe these are
some of the questions we should be asking as well if we want to fix the
problems in our society. Blessings!
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