I cannot look at the picture without tears. She would have been almost three years old soon. But she did not make her third birthday. You see for some reasons her parents either gave her away or the State moved in and she was without a permanent home. She expected to be adopted in January 2021. But for some reasons the adoption fell through--she was placed in foster care. And then the Foster Parents officially adopted her. Months later she was found dead. The Foster Parents were charged with homicide. She was beaten to death by a belt and died from internal bleeding. I cannot get her little face out of my mind. And so I grieve for a little girl named Victoria that I did not know. Last week she was laid to rest in a Greenville SC cemetery.
And this week in Uvade, Texas is burying child after child after child after sercvices at the Catholic Church there.19 children and two of their teachers were gunned down as they sat in a classroom by an 18 year old boy-man with an AK-47. Bought on his 18th birthday. They were mostly fourth graders who died. Nine. Ten. Some older. One family lost two children that day in Texas. Lesi...Uziyah...Amerie...Jose...Rojelio...Tess. These are just a few of those killed. Two teachers who loved their jobs and loved the kids they taught. And down the road in a hospital wounded kids still fight for their lives. And those grieving parents try to deal with their unspeakable grief.
Many of us in this country have grieved for little Victoria in Greenville and for those 19 children killed in their school in Uvalde, Texas. I do not want to deal with guns. Not today. Neither I do not want to rail out at legislators that seem more interested in power and their parking spots at LaGuardia Airport. Even this horrendous anguish of those who serve us is not our focus right now. Perhaps November will tell a different story.
We pray for parents and husbands of those that will never go home again. We lie in bed and wonder what can be done? The killing of children. There are no easy answers. Maybe no answers at all. That will come another day--but it will come. But today we think of little Victoria's fresh grave in Greenville.We see that mound of flowers and notes and candles and some pictures of the fallen ones in Texas. We are awash in grief.
We cannot forget little Rose's funeral or all those weeping, weeping in that Catholic church in Uvalde and all those in every town that are grieving, ignored and forgotten.
Reckon Jesus' challenge is applicable to all of us who live in 2022?
"If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone werer fastened around your neck and you were deowned in the midst of the sea."
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane
Found at the Monastery of Gethsemani
Bardstown, Kentucky
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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