Scripture: Mark 10:13-16

Thursday, May 26, 2022

Dear Pastor Xxxxx,

As your recent words on Facebook expressed, I also share an almost stupefying despair and torment and omnidirectional anger concerning the deaths of the nineteen children systematically murdered one by one in their classroom along with their teachers in a small town in Texas.  It is almost too much for me to bear as I think of my own precious grandchildren, and my deepest response has just been to call upon the name of the Lord, saying over and over “Lord, Lord, Lord…” within the pain and profound sorrow that at times overwhelms me.

I so appreciated Pastor Yyyyy leading the Wednesday Noon Prayer time in a Liturgy of Lament.  It was a blessing of grace and peace so helpful to many, I’m sure, in expressing our deepest sorrow and grief to the Lord.  And this at the awful moment in time when we were beginning to understand more and more the full horror of the last moments of those children shot one by one – the authorities needing DNA samples from parents to make sure they could positively identify the bodies, for perhaps facial recognition was no longer possible for many.  In my soul, I had to accept and face this awfulness to understand and embrace the overwhelming pain and suffering the parents, grandparents, families, and the town as a whole, were beginning to fully experience as a crushing weight of inescapable grief.  Some of the children murdered were cousins of each other – such multiplied family sorrow.

And it is with the weight of this image within my mind and soul, that I see and hear all the various elected government officials and their spokespersons and certain media commentators give immediate and insistent voice to all the measured political soundbites – the handy, precisely crafted, side-stepping media-ready spins, all overloaded with the full panel of deflecting and blame-shifting “us and them” accusations for the violence in our schools.  All of these deceits designed solely to exhale as effortlessly as possible into non-existence into our politically stagnant national air – so tragically thin of serious thought and independent thinking – obscuring all such shootings and the political truths and untruths of the evil behind the unchecked underlying violence allowed against the children of our nation. 

And within my mind and soul, the physical space that I place these evil and pathetically small-minded and worthless men – and perhaps women – when they make these, oh, so lofty pronouncements, is in a school in a small town in Texas. With their highly polished dress shoes – emblematic of their distant self-exalted positions – they stand in the middle of a classroom amongst the shattered skulls and gore of nineteen children and two desperately brave teachers.  And the feet of these exalted ones are firmly planted – projecting, of course, a calculated image of integrity, clear-thinking, and authority – among the books and papers and newly awarded certificates of achievement of mostly ten-year-olds, all now floating in their blood, these arrogant shiny shoes awash in the gore of children, unaware and indifferent to the hand of whichever dead child they strut and stand upon.  Persons, and their supporters, absolutely subject to the judgement of God.

In my grief and sorrow and numbing anger, this is the image I also bring before the Lord as I cry out against these men and women. Persons devoid of integrity and compassion, whose personal pursuit of fleeting petty power, the promotion of their godless political ideologies, and their mindless obeisance to other evil men and their major financial campaign supporters, paramount in their minds and souls.  And all these dead, skull-shattered children – just inconvenient debris that will hopefully be cleared away soon, or at least swept under the ever-present, all-purpose carpet of political expediency. A task especially important before people start thinking, and feeling, and acting again in ways that may begin to reflect a newly awakened conscience, a resurgence of independent thinking, and a renewed love of God and of our neighbor – perhaps starting with children. And all these potential new awakenings – major and feared threats to the desperate and evil-producing grasping of power of these faithless and godless men. They do not love their neighbor, they do not love children, and they absolutely do not love our nation or its peoples.

Please continue to be one of the few pastors it seems, to speak out against these evils with the truth and compassion of Jesus, His gospel, and His kingdom.  Let not these nineteen little children be forgotten.  Let it not be forgotten that the two great commandments are still to love God with our whole heart and mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves – the fulfillment of these commandments only possible when we understand and live them as one.

Thank you for doing what you do, and can do, to combat these great evils within our nation and the suffering around us all, and for encouraging us as we all work in the power of the Holy Spirit to do what we can and what we are called to do.

Sincerely, Chris Orozco, A grateful member of WOLC online.

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