Stuff we read

I've turned off most media in relation to the school shooting last week.  I don't need to watch it over and over and I don't need to know the details of the killer and his life.  I just don't.  All I do is pray for the families who are devastated.  I have read the occasional commentary about it, though.  And I learned something new.  Perhaps I'm naive, but there are actually Christians out there who are saying that this happened because Americans have turned their backs on God.  They are saying that because of policies that keep religion out of schools, stuff like this happens.

That baffles me.  And yet I've found that I don't even have a response to that.  Luckily, other writers are able to put into words what I'm thinking and today, I read the most powerful, truth-inspired commentary I've come across so far.  So, not my words today, but these.

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/god-kept-out

And a few particularly powerful quotes from the post:

When asked where God was on that awful Friday morning, these Christians have said that God did not show up at Sandy Hook because “God is not allowed in public schools,” because “ we have systematically removed God” from that place.
Brothers and sisters, let’s call this one for what it is: bullshit.  God can be wherever God wants to be. God needs no formal invitation. We couldn’t “systematically remove” God if we tried. If the incarnation teaches us anything, it’s that God can be found everywhere: in a cattle trough, on a throne, among the poor, with the sick, on a donkey, in a fishing boat, with the junkie, with the prostitute, with the hypocrite, with the forgotten, in places of power, in places of oppression, in poverty, in wealth, where God’s name is known, where it is unknown, with our friends, with our enemies, in our convictions, in our doubts, in life, in death, at the table, on the cross, and in every kindergarten classroom from Sandy Hook to Shanghai.  

 we don’t have to know why God let this happen to know that God was there…. and here,
and in those swaddling clothes,
and on that cross,
and in that grave,
and on the throne.
For no amount of darkness can overcome the light.