Darkness Doesn't Extinguish This Light

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness,and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light. John 1: 1-5 CEB

So much surfaced for us all when we read the news about Las Vegas and later watched the footage. Some of us found ourselves newly anxious about being in crowds or more suspicious of strangers out in public. Some  may be having nightmares and feeling depressed and reasonably frightened. All of these responses are a function of the fact that we are, in fact, human beings.

I have no answers for why some folks store up guns and then use them on innocent people in acts of random violence. The best I can do, if you want to be all cosmic, is muse upon the fact that “the world is a broken place.” You don’t need any reminder of that, though. Scroll through your news feed on any day and you can find evidence for that aplenty.

Even so, as people of faith we believe and live as if evil, even in a display as powerful as what happened Sunday, cannot ever stop good.We are a witness to this  truth about the Gospel of Christ. Countless acts of love and light are happening in each moment as we live together in the aftermath. Goodness will continue to grow (and will never stop!) 

Goodness will continue to put evil in its place when we start talking with one another about  about guns and their place our lculture We have to truly begin to see the other- the enemy- the pain the neck person – the person who might even hate us- as a brother or sister. We have to have serious, difficult, family talks about our addiction to violence and our deeply-held belief that it ever really works for anything. 

If we are people of this light, we are challenged to begin acting as if we believe what John told us. We can live as children of this light- even as we weep and continue to ask, "Why?"