When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers. Proverbs 21:15
When tragedy strikes we spend time trying to understand the events and then at some point we try to accept what has happened and hopefully move on sometime in the future. Many question where God is and why do such horrible things happen to good people especially innocent ones like children. Somehow we have to come to accept the tragic events that take place and live with the reality of what has happened and just hope it doesn’t happen again. We pray for the comfort of those that have lost their loved ones and pray it doesn’t happen again. But how can we cope? How can we move on when a senseless tragic act has taken place?
Last Friday was such an event. In Newtown, CT an armed gunman went in killing 26 people at the school including 20 children. He killed his mother and at the end killed himself. Those that are involved are gone. So who do we hold accountable? How can justice be served? Do we just accept what has happened and try to move on? This community, this town, the families, even our nation will never be the same.
What aches in the hearts of these families and each of us is a cry for justice. We want justice for every life that was lost and every one that was terrorized by these events. It gives us no comfort in knowing the gunman is dead. He will never have to face the grief of the families or feel the shame of what he has done. The families need justice, we cry for justice.
God is a lover of justice. He is just. He does not look the other way, or ignore our plights. We must cry out to God for justice. We must ask God to restore and repay to these families, community, and others everything that they lost. We cannot be satisfied with simply accepting what has happened and move on. Deep down we want justice; we will never be satisfied until justice is served.
That has been my cry to God this past week for justice. I know God will comfort those families and I will hold them in prayer. But I want to see justice given to them. I want the enemy of this earth to pay back everything that was stolen from Newtown including the innocence that was lost last Friday.
I trust God knows what justice is and what justice looks like. I really don’t know but God does so I ask for justice. God please give us justice.
Even though this act was committed by one man, we know that the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour. Jesus described the devil as one that kills, steals and destroys. Satan is the father of evil and he has shown that nothing is sacred including our children. Evil visited Newtown last Friday disguised in the form of a lone gunman, but evil none the less murdered those children and adults last Friday. So we ask God for justice to put an end to the tactics and role of the enemy. That evil not have the final say in these peoples’ lives but that in the end justice and love will prevail. We will not bow down to fear and evil but we celebrate the love, unity and peace that are within us and from God.
So God please give us justice – vengeance belongs to you.
Reflections 