Anger

One thing that hurts my heart so much about the school shooting in Connecticut is all the anger it has created.  

Anger towards the boy who went in and hurt so many families. Anger at gun control laws.  Anger with the system. Anger with not being able to do anything.

But what really does anger lead to?  Nothing good has ever come out of blind anger.  Very few times has anger lead to something good, and usually it's a righteous, justified anger.  I'm not saying that some don't have righteous anger for what happened.  But we can't be angry at the shooter.  We can't be angry at the government and our legal system.  We can't even be mad at ourselves.  

This is all because our world is broken.  On our own, we are hopeless.  Left to our own moral judgments and selfish intentions, this will keep happening and happening over and over again.  We as people are not intrinsically good, because we have poisoned ourselves.    

I know that sounds harsh, but that is what God tells us.  We were created for good.  But sin has polluted our world.  And now we are left with the consequences   Now, every human is born with the internal drive to disobey our Father.  We are selfish, and we think for ourselves.  

But that's the beauty of our Creator.  He sees us in our grime and loves us anyway.  Even as we run in the opposite direction, He pursues us.  He loves us.  He has always loved us.  He will always love us.  

And He loves all of us.  He loves you, and me.  He loves those 20 young children who died.  He loves the teachers who stood in the way of the bullets to protect their students.  He loves the young man who did all of this.  

He has loved the worst of us, and the best of us.  But even through all that He knows that we can never measure up with Him on our own.  So He gave us a way to get to Him, by dying in our place.  You see, the most powerful force on this earth is love, but not the love we have for our families, the love we have for our friends.  But the love a Father has for His children. Enough to die for us.  

So all this anger?  It just feeds into the cycle we as humans are cursed with.  

I don't claim to know everything.  I don't claim to know what good could possibly come out of this.  But I do claim the truth of God's Word in my life, in this world.  And  I know that He holds all things.  I am His, and He holds me in the palm of His hand.   I know He is orchestrating all of this in accordance to His plan.  His plans are there to give us a hope and a future.  

And I know my future is going to be with Him.  If you don't, do not hesitate to talk to me.  Because I would love to introduce you to a love that is more amazing and powerful than all the hate, violence, and pain in this world.  

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Edit: 

I wrote all of this late last night before I went to bed, trying to get my thoughts out so I could sleep.  

Today in Bible Fellowship Groups (AKA Sunday School), we talked about the wise men.  It struck me that Herod, who got the same evidence as the wise men did, responded to the Christmas message of hope, peace, and love in anger, fear, and jealousy.  How dare another king be born to take his place?

But don't we sometimes react the same?  God, how could you do this thing? How could you allow my life to be affected, altered, in such a negative way?

But the thing about us, in our humanity, we can't see the ultimate outcome.  We don't know how things will work out in the end, but God does.  He knows how it will all work out in the end. 

None of us will have all the answers.  But we can trust and rely on the Lord of the Universe, that he has all things under his control.