Too many lives wrenched from life far too soon. Too many children are slaughtered. Make no mistake, for the most part the victims of Orlando were children yet, perhaps beginning to play at adulthood, but not yet fully formed. We are all children.
Remember them.
Remember their parents in their unendurable grief. The mothers, who will never again hold them in their arms, who will never again run their fingers through their hair or caress their cheeks, remembering the permanent imprint of baby sweetness. Remember them. Remember their fathers, perhaps less remonstrative and inclined to sentimental dreaming, the fathers who grieve no less deeply, whose children were no less a part of themselves. Remember them. Remember their sisters and brothers; their friends and neighbors. Remember all the children who have died, and all who knew them. We all knew them. They are all our children. Remember them all.
Remember them. Pray for them. Pray for ourselves. Ask the questions we don't want to face. Seek the answers we are afraid to find. What kind of people are we that we so regularly sacrifice our children at the altar of fear? How many tears can the fabric of our culture sustain before there is nothing left to mend?
