Christmas Grief - God is Present with Us as We Remember the Sandy Hook Children


My husband mentioned that there has been a few news articles most recently asking where God was the day 6 and 7 year olds lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary.I have to admit, that hasn't been one of my questions this Christmas season, rather I have found meaning in a part of the Christmas story that for the most part of my life I have overlooked:

Matthew 2:16-18
New International Version (NIV)

16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18   “A voice is heard in Ramah,  
weeping and great mourning, 
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,     
because they are no more.”[a]

         I am comforted and see the Christmas story in a new way.  At that very first Christmas, an entire class was lost, and the people of Israel grieved. I think there is something precious in the reality that our Christmas story is not  just a story of joy, hope, and love, but it is also a story that recognizes our human frailness.  There is a place for the grieving in the story of Christ's birth.  We grieve now as Rachel wept then - God left space in the telling of Jesus' birth story, to give those who grieve a place of meaning.

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