As I write this, my three-year-old daughter is sleeping soundly on our family bed. Her six-year-old brother is with their father, at my in-laws' place.
I am supposed to be sleeping. (As per my ob-gyne's advice, I need to rest more. My last ultrasound showed that I have placenta previatotalis, which means my placenta is totally covering the opening of the uterine cervix, so I am more prone to bleeding. Another reason to pray, hope and not worry.)
I thought I would try working on an article instead.
But I couldn't stop thinking about last week's events.
And usually, when that happens, I attempt to write my thoughts down — in the hopes of making some sense out of the senselessness of it all.
I'm sure by now most, if not all, of you already know what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last week. It is a horrible, senseless tragedy — one that ended up with 20 young children, aged 6 and 7, and six adults dead — brutally murdered in a place that is supposed to be a child’s “home away from home,†i.e. school.
Every time I think about those little kids, I see our son’s face. He just turned six last October. And I weep. I actually found myself sobbing while reading the first news report I saw about Sandy Hook… and the other reports after that. I could not imagine how devastated the parents of those kids and the other victims must feel now.
On the same day the news about the Sandy Hook shootings spread worldwide, a news report about schoolchildren and an elderly woman being stabbed in China broke out. The 22 students were on their way to school at the time.Apparently, their attacker had some form of mental illness.
All of these, accompanied by the stream of news reports about the recent havoc wreaked by typhoon Pablo in the Philippines, plus the recent passage of the RH Bill, have left me in a very pensive mood lately.
Of course, there is also the regular “bad†news that we receive every day: of crimes, corruption, family break-ups and whatnot.
It can be enough to drive someone crazy with hopelessness.
Which brings me to the point of this article: I believe that what the world really, desperately needs now is… hope.
Hope that no lawmaker, no president, no law enforcement official, no laws, no human person nor humanly created mechanism can bring.
It is the hope that only Emmanuel, “God with us,†the Prince of Peace Himself, can bring.
So as we count down to Christmas, dear friends, my prayer is that we all allow the “Hope-Bearer†into our hearts, homes and lives. We may not have the answer to all the senseless tragedies happening in our world today, but we can rest assured that the One who knows us better than we know ourselves also holds our future and our children’s future in His hands.
P.S.
The victims of Typhoon Pablo still greatly need our help. To find out how you can help make Christmas a little bit brighter for our countrymen in need, please click here.