Today I want to share an excerpt from my prayer time. I don’t usually do this, but feel it is appropriate at a time of national grief …

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“Thank you for being a constant and caring God. Many people don’t know you—not the real you.

Many people think that you could‘ve stopped what happened Friday in Newtown, Connecticut. But you have given us …

freewill.

Our choices bring these tragedies upon our nation. I’ve certainly contributed in my small way or even big way. I’ve not shared my faith or been living it out boldly or purely enough to point the way clearly to you. 

I’m guilty by association. 

I don’t want to point fingers, although that seems so necessary when you’ve seen such a terrible evil unleashed upon little innocent lives. I couldn’t really understand it, or even feel it fully on Friday or Saturday. But it’s starting to sink in today. It happens so often that it feels like “the norm” in some terribly horrendous way.

Those bright, little lives that were lost on that day were not lost to you, were they? You knew when they woke up that it would be their last day on earth. Did you want to intervene?

Did you weep when the sun rose on their chubby cheeks and sleepy eyes?

I know that you’re intimately acquainted with all of our ways and care about the insignificant details that we’re not even aware of in life, so you feel for us. You weep for us …

How you must grieve even deeper—with more agonizing pain—than we as humans could ever feel or imagine. You care about what happened. You mourn and moan for the loss of it all. 
 
I know for my part I am falling down on the job. I am often missing the point. I am, we all are, heading swiftly to the time of your coming, because you can’t stand the stench of our sins much longer.

So forgive me for my part in this massacre.

Forgive me for my apathy and my laziness in not sharing you and your hope.

Help me to change.

Help me to do more to reach out and share my faith … with an immense sense of urgency and penetrating heart of compassion for those who don’t know the real You.”

Please feel free to hold me accountable on this, MM readers. 

And if you’re someone who has not received Christ’s free gift of salvation and forgiveness, please check out my Know God page to find out how to begin that relationship … because Christ is the only hope in this messy, evil world.

“God cares, cares right down to the last detail.” James 5:11 (Msg)

Linking up with NOBH, Playdates with God, Rachel Wojnarowski, Life in the Comments, What Joy is Mine and Matrimonial Monday