Like many of you, I wake up each morning and check the news to see what’s transpired overnight. Day after day, week after week, the Chicago Tribune reports on drive-by shootings, shooting sprees, cop killings, slayings and the like. Weekend nights are especially bad. Headlines like “3 killed, 17 wounded in overnight shootings” are typical. Last weekend a six-year-old girl was shot on her porch, in front of her mother and younger sibling, a victim of suspected gang violence.
Today we remember the small children of Bethlehem who were put to death by King Herod. As participants in Women of the ELCA we have committed ourselves to “promote healing and wholeness in the church, the society and the world.” How do I–how do you–weigh that commitment against the reality of senseless deaths happening day in, day out? Have we become so desensitized to these killings that we are no longer shocked by them? No longer moved to respond in some way? Lord, have mercy.