The Loss of the Innocents

    Ours is a profoundly broken world. Evil stalks small children as they sit in kindergarten 'morning circle' and we are helpless. Many will understandably ask how a good God can endure the murder of children. Douthat points out, there is "no direct theological rebuttal," no answer that satisfies. Yet God is not silently aloof to our suffering; he has answered it.

    As Douthat writes, "... the Christmas story isn’t just the manger and the shepherds and the baby Jesus, meek and mild. The rage of Herod is there as well, and the slaughtered innocents of Bethlehem, and the myrrh that prepares bodies for the grave. The cross looms behind the stable — the shadow of violence, agony and death." Christmas is a time to remember that God stepped into this broken world and clothed himself in suffering.

    If there is an answer to the suffering in Newtown, it is in babe who was hunted in Bethlehem but escaped in order that he could grow to be the man who suffered and died on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem. Our hope is in God's promise that by the death and resurrection of his only son, death will be swallowed up by his victory and he will wipe away all tears forever.