"How Long, O Lord, How Long . . . "

LAMENT :  " a passionate expression of grief or sorrow"

Psalm 13 in the Hebrew Bible : "How long, O Lord? . . . How long must  I take counsel in my soul

  and have sorrow in my heart all the day ?

How long shall my enemies be exalted over me?"

   As you know, it has happened AGAIN !!  For the 245th time in the last 20 years according to a Facebook post by a woman named Eliza Kay Sparks . . . schools from Elementary and High Schools and colleges and universities !! And there have  been 27 school shootings thus far in 2022.

   And in American society at large, just today the Washington Post reports that already there have been Fourteen (14) mass shootings over Memorial Day week-end.

     Many times  the mantra has been trotted out that the best defense against a bad person with a gun is a good  person with a gun. How many idle 'good guns' were in the school in Uvalde while teachers and children were being killed?  It reflects the myth of  redemptive violence . . . guns will solve your problems.  ( the only probable exception being in self-defense in a shoot or be shot situation.) Death by firearms is rapidly becoming the Number One killer of American youth under the age of 20.

    What, then, can be done in this nation with the highest homicide rate, including school shootings, in the world ?  A complex matter, right? Wrong.  At least not for first steps . . . 

  ..reportedly 89% of Americans favor background checks to purchase weapons;

  .. laws to ban the sale of assault weapons in a civilian society;  

  ..an updated understanding of the purpose of the  Second Amendment ('A well-regulated militia doesn't kill school children.');

  .. holding accountable 'leaders' who apparently are more sensitive to the money of the gun lobby than to the protection  of teachers, school children and society at large.  They speak with all the sensitivity and empathy as buzzards devouring carrion.

   Tonight there are nineteen (19) Texas children dead who need not to be.  Mothers and Fathers are weeping for their children, lamenting their slaughter, echoing words attributed to the  Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, :

   "Is it nothing to you, all you who  pass by?  Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. . ."  Please do not say something like 'God caused it to happen' or  'it was God's  plan'.  Jesus of Nazareth whom Christians believe spoke authoritatively about the Holy One said  "It is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost."

(Matthew 18:14).

    Indeed, O Lord, how long . . . .

       Satchel