Five years ago, we were all shocked and shaken by Sandy Hook and the unbelievable events that touched so many lives with death and devastation.

I processed as I often do, by writing. This showed up in a review of my Facebook posts from later that same week:

I read the paper in the morning online. I scan. There are so many things about which to pray in my community. It occurred to me how many senseless deaths we tend to accept as normal parts of our news. Rarely is there a day in Fresno without some report of violence – at least two new murders in yesterday's paper — one very near our church, on my beaten path, a drive-by. Rarely a week goes by that I do not meet a shooting victim, stabbing victim, or person who has been senselessly beaten. It just doesn't happen all at once in one place with a heavy toll – not all in once, but steady.

This morning's text is "What should we do then?” (Luke 3:10)

What shall we do? I roughed out some notes on my blog. I will link it in the comments. I always get to the question in my own life. I cannot just moan. I can pray, but I cannot just pray. I can hug, but I cannot just hug. I can be present and see where that leads, but something inside of all of us senses the need to do something.

We cannot let go of that. We get stirred up and then we get settled. We cannot settle in. We must find a peace that passes understanding and, while it guards our hearts and minds, does not allow us to lose our brokenness and inner call to act in faith, compassion, and hope for justice and shalom.

Hear the voices from Sandy Hook – voices of grace and mourning, voices of the innocent, voices of heroes who laid down their lives for others, voices of children who seek to comfort each other, voices of remembrance for bright shining lives that were lost. Hear their voices.

We are told that incidents like Sandy Hook are rare and they are. They really are. They are statistically rare and it is the rare and unusually warped person who perpetrates such acts. They cannot be predicted.

But daily violence is NOT RARE. It is all around us and it is perpetrated by people who are redeemable and generally in their right minds. But they are also warped and they have been caught up in systems (gangs and not just gangs) that devalue life and overvalue power and some false sense of "honor." Greed, anger, hate, and lust. They make very bad decisions and sometimes they get by with them, but not ultimately. They leave lives, families, and communities scarred.

It must not continue. We must do something.

Sure, we need gun safety. I believe in it and I promote it, but it is not enough. It is not enough to fix laws or programs. It is not enough to build bigger jails or hire more police officers. Our communities need the Shalom of God. People need the Light of the World, the Hope of the Hopeless. They need grace, peace, love, and truth. They need forgiveness and restoration. They need us doing something!

All of these things are built into one word of hope that John the Baptist proclaimed without full understanding that that Jesus offered as a live option with help to make it happen: REPENT.

It is a grace word and hope word and a word of possibility. it means that we can and must turn around and we need Spirit and Fire to help us do it!

Then, whatever else is happening around us, we can sing with Horatio Spafford who lost so much in one moment, "It is Well With My Soul."

Let us sing it and believe it as we do what we need to do wherever we are.