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Newtown Tragedy

As you probably already know by now, on Friday morning a young man walked into the elementary school where his mother worked as a teacher's aide and brutally murdered 20 children and 7 adults prior to taking his own life. While the media has speculated about it, the motive behind it is still unknown. It is sad when something like this happens, and it is worse in this case because approximately 75% of the victims were under the age of 8 and still had their whole lives ahead of them.

Unfortunately, too many people used the publicity surrounding this tragedy not to call for prayer for the victims and their families, but to call for stricter gun control laws. This is not the proper response. The gun itself did not kill those children, the man wielding it did. In addition, if a law abiding citizen inside the building had had a gun, the massacre could have been stopped sooner. These children were killed by the evil of Satan manifested in a young man with a gun. When we miss this point, evil has the upper hand and nothing is going to change. Gun laws aren't going to save kids from killers like this, but finding ways to discover evil desires like this in other young men and purge them out will.

Another thing we can do to save other students is pray. Pray for the victims of this tragedy, pray for their families, but most of all, pray for other young men who for one reason or another see something like this as a solution to their problems. Pray also for all who work in a school setting, so that they may be prepared to respond appropriately in a situation such as this. Pray for students who hear this news and fear returning to school after Christmas, and for parents that may have the same fears. Pray without ceasing knowing that God hears your prayers and hope with all your heart that no more parents have to go through what parents went through on Friday morning.

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