Our Christmas Carol

Yesterday was the mass killing in a Newtown, CT elementary school.

Last night I saw my second born perform in the role of Scrooge's nephew in a local adaptation of A Christmas Carol. The director is a 5th grade teacher here in town. I can't imagine how the day's tragedy played through his heart and mind. He loves kids. He teaches kids.

So the lens of the day had Scrooge's Christmas Past, Present, and Future ghosts loom a little differently in my mind and caused me think about our future. Based on our present. Stemmed from our past. We are a crazy country, in a crazy world, at a crazy time. And we all want everything to be "fine". The problem is the methods we use to make it fine. We typically wait, blame, apply solely reason, legislate, excuse-make, suppress, or just sit on our behinds and complain. Rarely do we take action. All too often, we don't see love.

This past election season was a tough one for me. I've spent the past year volunteering once a week at The Atlanta Mission, a homeless shelter in downtown Atlanta. And in doing so, I have learned a lot about myself, my Faith, my culture, and my socio-economic acumen. In addition, I've seen other perspectives, lifestyles, social and cultural realities, and societal inequalities. A revisited perspective caused me to really wrestle with my vote. My desire to truly do the right thing. I wrestled, tossed and turned, wanting to make a difference. I was for one guy, then the other. Then I decided to just vote for the one guy who hit on a couple core things I believed in. Then I voted. 

I tuned in to the election coverage for a few hours that night, and watched the networks use there cool charts, touch screens, and exit polling. Then I got tired. Went to bed. Woke up later that night and turned on the TV to see if there was some sort of conclusion. I heard Stevie singing Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Then turned it off, rolled over, and went back to bed. 

I learned that God's love, my love, my life, my activities, my words, cast more opportunity for impact than my cast vote.

There have been a lot of "hug your kids a little tighter" comments all over the broadcast and social medias. And I understand that. And surely we should. And maybe this is a right season for just that. We need to mourn*. But, we can't remain hunkered down in our own safe zone. There is a world out there that needs our love, our prayer, our activity.

Maybe somehow this evil, tragic, horrific, non-sense, will cause pause to visit the importance of how we live in the world we live in. I said in my post yesterday, "I don't think we can shelter and escape it." I pray that we all decide to take action in love. Move from here in love. Scrooge had an opportunity to change a future. We do too.

"Do not merely listen to the word, and in so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" - James 1:22

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* Ecclesiastes 3:1-7

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
A time to be born and a time to die, 

a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak