Where Was God?

Lots of people are talking about the shooting that happened last week.  I haven’t mentioned anything about it on my blog because I wanted to find the right words to say.  I found them after watching a video of Mike Huckabee’s reaction.

I streamed news videos on Friday and kept a close watch on CNN’s website because they were doing updates every 10 minutes or so on information that was coming out.  I also kept a close watch on Twitter as well as Fox News and AL.com.  The most unfortunate part of the media coverage was that almost everything that came out of news outlets while the sun was up on Friday was false.  They had the wrong guy.  The wrong age.  The wrong body count.  The wrong family story.  It was all false.  The true stories and names came out that night and some even the next day.  I am hugely disappointed in the media at invading the school at a time like this.  Parents had no idea what was going on with their kids and the media was throwing out all kinds of false statements.  These websites should be ashamed.

I won’t go into most of my thoughts on the shooting because they are personal but what I will say is that it hit me.  Hard.  I have cried multiple times not just out of sorrow for these parents that lost their children right before Christmas (these precious angels probably still have presents wrapped under the tree with their names on them), but also out of fear for my own child.  As a mother, my son will one day be in school and I will have to deal with this.  This horrific event brought one thought to my head that I have been struggling with ever since it happened.  I can only protect him so much.  It doesn’t matter if I home-school or even if I am with Carter 24 hours a day.  This type of event could happen anywhere at any time.  I can’t protect him all the time.  And that kills me.  It hurts my heart badly.  But I have to trust God and his angels to protect Carter when I can’t.  I pray for his safety every day that I breathe and I just have to trust God.

People are looking for who to blame for this event.  I can answer that for you pretty easy, no investigation needed.  Sin.  Sin is to blame.  The sin that our nation apparently encourages because we have abandoned our God and won’t allow his name to be mentioned.    If our schools won’t allow God’s name to be mentioned, how are we, as parents, supposed to teach them to pray and ask for forgiveness?  Let’s assume a child goes to bed around 8pm and wakes up at 7am (this is just an assumption).  A child is typically in school anywhere from 8-10 hours a day (depending on after school care for working parents).  So out of the 13 hours a child is awake, they’re at school for 8-10 of them.  A school that won’t allow God to be talked about.  What are we teaching our children??  I can teach Carter all about God and how he needs God in his life, but this will confuse him because the schools are teaching that God can’t be talked about.  THIS MUST STOP!

On to the Mike Huckabee part.  In a video I have seen spread across multiple social media sites, Mike addresses the “Where was God?” questions that keep popping up after this horrific event.  And his answer is right on the money.  I’m paraphrasing of course, but here’s what Mike says:

Where was God during this horrific event and why did he allow it?  It’s interesting how we, as a nation, ask where God was in all this.  The reality is, we’ve pushed God away.  Something bad happens and we’re all asking “Where is God?”.  Well, God is up in Heaven watching down because we have pushed him out of our school systems and out of our lives.  We can’t pray at public events nor mention his name or the Bible’s story of creation.  Why is it that when something bad happens we want God to protect us from it, but we won’t follow him like we’re supposed to when life is fine and hunky dory?  Mike goes on to say that lots of people are wanting laws in place to prevent things like this from happening (gun control and such).  His response?  There is a law in place!  It’s call “thou shalt not kill”, we’re just not following it.  He also says that there’s 9 other laws, but unfortunately he isn’t allowed to discuss them in public.  High five for Mike Huckabee!

We can’t just take the good that comes with believing in God and dismiss the bad.  We can’t expect God to protect us and bless us when we push him aside and don’t spread his word.   Please don’t be confused on the purpose of this post.  I am by NO means saying anyone of those precious babies did anything to deserve this nor did their parents.  God has a plan.  And this tragedy was part of it for some reason.  And we won’t understand that reason until we face him in Heaven.  Why does God allow it?  It’s called free will.  We are responsible for our own actions.  We act like this event (or Columbine, or even 9/11) was the first time  God allowed something like this.  Anyone actually sit down to read the Old Testament?  Because there were tons of things God allowed back then too.  Rape.  Murder.  Incest.  Killing of first borns.  That list can go on and on.  And it even goes into the New Testament too.  This is not a new thing.  It all boils down to this.  God gives us free will to do what we choose to do in this life.  When we choose to disobey him and go our own way, he doesn’t stop us, because it was our choice.  God did NOT kill 20 children.  Adam Lanza did.  Satan did.  Sin did.

I am in the process of reading the Bible front to back and I’m in 2 Kings right now.  The common theme in the Bible is that the Israelites followed God, then they turned away, then they followed again, then they turned away again.  This cycle happens over and over and over.  This is what I see in our nation.  And that’s scary.   I read Exodus where all the Israelites have just escaped from captivity in Egypt.  Moses is at the top of the mountain getting God’s commandments and what are the Israelites doing at the bottom of the mountain?  Making idols of gold to worship.  Imagine being God.  You just saved these people and they don’t even care.  They’re at the bottom of the mountain dancing around a golden calf, praising it.  They’re raping women, getting drunk and even sacrificing children.  I remember reading that book and thinking “my Lord these people are so blind and disrespectful and just BAD people”.  But is our current nation and its inhabitants any different though?  We claim to be “one nation under God”, and yet we’ve given him the boot in all aspects of our lives.  The only place where it’s acceptable to talk about him is at church.

I will end this post on my favorite part of Mike’s speech.  To sum it up, he says that he does believe God was there when it all went down.  He was in the hearts of those teachers that put their bodies in between the bullets and the children, sparing their lives.  He believes he was the courage that it took for those policemen to enter the building having no idea if they would be met with gunfire or not.  And shockingly (this is my two cents) he was there when Adam Lanza put the gun on himself instead of searching for more children to kill.  God was there, even when we didn’t want him to be.

There’s one picture I saw on Instagram that has helped me through the tears I have shed for these poor sweet babies.  It shows all these children on a cloud with two hands from a man reaching out to them.  That man, I believe, is Jesus.  And you don’t see his face, just his hands.  The children are all smiling at him and staring in awe and reaching for his hands.  The caption to the picture says “My children!  Welcome!  Come! Come!!  My, you’re so beautiful.  You must have been so afraid….well, never again.  You are with me now.  Come, I have so much to show you!”

I am crying now as I write that.  The only thing that gets me through my fear for Carter is that if something like this were to ever happen to him, he would be there with those children and Jesus would be taking care of him until I got there.  My prayer for these parents is that this hope is what they cling to and that it helps them get through their pain and disbelief.  I pray that they know that Jesus is taking care of their babies for them and that those babies have no idea what happened, only that they love where they are and are very happy and waiting on their parents.

But this cycle has to stop y’all.  I don’t know how to do it or how to get an entire nation to turn from their sins for that matter, but we must bring God back into our lives.  Teach your children who he is and what he’s done for us.  Commit to saying his name to your children every single day since they won’t hear it in school.  Pray with your child at night.  Since we don’t have our children most of the time, we have to utilize what we do have.  Regardless of what people say, the world is not going to end on Friday.  These children are the future of this nation.  We must teach them God’s ways and get back on the path of righteousness!

Oh and one last thing….gun control.  If anyone honestly thinks that gun control will fix this problem, you are sadly mistaken.  Gun control can’t fix evil.  Only God can.  You want a solution?  Buy a Bible.  Read it.  Quote it.  Talk about it.  And then pass it to anyone you know that doesn’t have one.