As details continue to emerge regarding the man who allegedly killed his teacher mother and 20 of her students (along with 6 other adults and himself) at an elementary school in Connecticut, tonight’s overflowing prayer vigil was the first of many responses churches sought to offer.
A quick round-up of responses to today’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut:
CT’s Mark Galli reflects on the death–and life–of innocent children, concluding they “are not alone–nor without hope.”
Southern Baptist churches in the area are preparing to work across denominational lines to offer counseling and prayer.
Max Lucado told CNN that most pastors will be “scrapping their scheduled Sunday sermons.” “You have to address it – you have to turn everything you had planned upside down on Friday because that’s where people’s hearts are,” he said.
Ed Stetzer of LifeWay Research offers three ways Christians should respond to “the horror of a broken world.”
Michael Patton at Credo House says that the answer to questions of why such horrors happen is “both more simple and more terrifying than we think.”
Amy Julia Becker, who lives 20 miles from the school, reflects on how Advent is “a time of longing, of crying out for God to continue to break into this broken world and make it right.”
Peter Smith of the Courier-Journal grew up 15 miles from Newton and cites Southern Baptist theology professor and art critic William L. Hendricks:
“Most playwrights deem it almost impossible to write a good Christmas drama. The events surrounding the nativity are less dramatic when Herod’s slaughter of the innocents is not included. Herein is true horror, true evil—but no resolution. The incarnation begins the resolution of these problems, but one must wait for the true climax. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ represent that specific moment when the material and the spiritual are united, threatened, reunited and melded together indissolubly.”
