{"id":898,"date":"2012-12-15T08:31:34","date_gmt":"2012-12-15T13:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2012-12-19T18:51:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T23:51:29","slug":"only-god-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/only-god-knows\/","title":{"rendered":"Only God Knows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another tragic shooting has happened in our country.\u00a0 Yesterday (Friday, December 14, 2012) a man went into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut.\u00a0 Twenty children are dead along with six adults at the school (including the principal who working to help the children), the alleged shooter, and his mother.\u00a0 Any murder is a tragedy but especially with children and some many of them.<\/p>\n

The details are still coming forth.\u00a0 No motive has been determined yet.\u00a0 Some speculate if the shooter suffered from mental illness.\u00a0 There was confusion at first over who the shooter was.\u00a0 All of that is for the police to determine.<\/p>\n

The question I write to talk about is why this happened.\u00a0 Why does any tragedy happen?\u00a0 The honest answer is I don’t know!\u00a0 I wish I did but only God<\/em> knows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if and when we have answers to our questions, it doesn’t change what has happened.\u00a0 Answers may help prevent further shootings.\u00a0 For right now, we need to focus on the here and now.\u00a0 We must pray for the families who have lost children and adults.\u00a0 We must pray for the school.\u00a0 We must pray for the emergency workers (police, rescue, et al).\u00a0 We must pray for all the people in the town because they are all affected by this.<\/p>\n

I already said only God knows why this happened but God did not cause this to happen.\u00a0 In recent years, I have heard people say that disasters like the earthquake in Haiti a couple of years ago was God punishing the people for their sins.\u00a0 I do not believe God causes<\/strong> such things to happen.\u00a0 God does allow<\/em> such things to happen (only\u00a0God knows why) but God does not cause them to happen.\u00a0 Sometimes bad things happen because we make bad choices and God allows us to face the consequences.\u00a0 Sometimes we have no idea why bad things happen.\u00a0 In this case at Sandy Hook Elementary, tragedy happened because one man-made bad choices.\u00a0 We don’t know why but that is the way it is.<\/p>\n

I wish I had great words of wisdom to offer but I can’t explain this.\u00a0 all I can say is:<\/p>\n

God did not cause this shooting to happen but God was present.\u00a0 I firmly believe God was right there with the children and adults who were shot.\u00a0 God was present in the emergency workers.\u00a0 God was present at the prayer vigils that happened last night.\u00a0 God was and is present in every single tear <\/strong><\/em>that is shed over this.<\/p>\n

Peace,<\/p>\n

Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another tragic shooting has happened in our country.\u00a0 Yesterday (Friday, December 14, 2012) a man went into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut.\u00a0 Twenty children are dead along with six adults at the school (including the principal who working to help the children), the alleged shooter, and his mother.\u00a0 Any murder is a tragedy …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Only God Knows’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-eu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":905,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}