in the wake of the newtown tragedy

I saw the video of one of the fathers last night.
His face. His tears. His loss.
I cannot even fathom what that kind of cutting pain feels like. I'm not even sure it is possible to put that agony, that despair, that brokenness into words.
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I've been thinking about the deep roots of the massacre, the way it affects so many. The slain children and adults have parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, spouses... They were members of a community. They attended church services, bought hot chocolate at the general store, saw doctors when they were sick, decorated their homes for Christmas, and went to school - a place that was safe, until it wasn't.
Still, there are others: the residents of Newtown. The chief medical examiner. The director of the funeral home. The police force. The hospital surgeons. The journalists. The list goes on.
And then, the rest of the country.
I ran into a friend's mom at the gym yesterday; she had just gotten off the elliptical when I waved her over. She was crying, wiping away tears. I didn't even have to ask.
"I can't... I can't imagine," she said softly. "I just want to hug my kids."
For parents, these recent events are devastating. It is a perspective that a nineteen-year-old girl can't understand. But one thing is blatantly clear: What happened in Newtown was an act of evil.
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The world we live in is filled with evil. There is violence and hatred in every country, every state, every city, every street corner. It is a fallen place, and at the root of the mess, there is sin.
In the case of Newtown, the shooter lived out his inherent sinfulness in the worst way possible. He destroyed lives and sent our nation into a state of disbelief, confirming the world's evilness.
There is just one remedy for this evil: the Lord Jesus Christ.
Bob Christopher, on his daily radio broadcast, put it like this:
"We want to say it's all kinds of other things. We want to give credence to drugs or mental disease, but we have to come back and say, at the root of it, it's sin. It's just the problem of the world. That's why Christ came: to save us from sin. And yet, here in America, we don't want to talk about Jesus... We need Jesus. That kid needed Jesus. Those families that are suffering... They need the comfort of Jesus. They need to know that His arms are around them, strengthening, giving them compassion and comfort. This world needs the Lord."