Good words from Rev. Raymond Hartwig, Secretary of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

All of us find our emotions reeling this weekend in the aftermath of the horrible destruction of innocent childrens’ lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Random senseless shootings are awful every time. Random senseless shootings of young children too small to defend themselves strike us as even more awful. Without wishing to minimize in any way this terrible tragedy and this weekend’s suffering by parents, siblings, grandparents, and community . . . just an observation.

In the earlier days of ”legalized” abortion, there were warnings of the long-range effects on our society of wholesale abortion, of the careless destruction of the most defenseless among us, of its devaluation of human life. It was feared that a society that brutally takes the lives of its unborn children will become hardened and, in due time, reflect that brutality toward all human life.

There are, of course, many “dots” that can be connected to random killings–mental illness, violent video games and entertainment, etc. But can we sometime soon also connect the abortion dot? While violent killings are as old as Cain and Abel, random acts of violence against innocent human life continue to increase in number and horror, underscored by what happened on Friday. Brutality toward women and children, once shrugged off as a problem elsewhere in the world, now occurs too often in our own society not to connect this dot.

One of the great messages of this Advent Season is the coming of Christ again. We can only wonder how that will be. But the tragedy in Connecticult must also cause us to wonder how it will be if Christ does not come again soon. As Vice-President Mueller put it in his letter to the Council of Presidents on Friday, the evil one is ”thrashing about” on this earth. Things can and may get really ugly.

However that will be, one thing we know for sure. For those who are in Christ, even the ugliest events of this world and life are always followed by a final dot, announced by that wonderful three-letter word “but” in St. Paul’s words to the church at Corinth: “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:57).  It’s the final dot that counts the most.

A blessed advent to you and yours.

Ray Hartwig