May God be with the people of Uvalde, Texas, and all those who have been traumatized again by a senseless shooting. In fact, God is there! God is in the shared compassion between people, in the loving comfort offered to the grieving, and in the hope for a better world.
     If we start trying to explain, or making excuses, or create some meaning for why someone committed such violence, we start to make it acceptable. There is no meaning to the killings. Nor can we say that God made it happen to “teach us a lesson,” or that God “let it happen.”
     What are some other facts about what happened? Others had bullied this boy. He did not deserve to be bullied. No one deserves to be bullied. Bullying and teasing someone for being different is also always wrong. There is no excuse, no justification, and no reasonable explanation for it. It is mean and hurtful. It makes no sense to think, “You are different, so I/we will make you suffer!”
     At the same time, there is no justification to think that somebody deserves to get revenge. Violence too often begets violence. Human society does not advance with vengeful actions nor do we make progress by thinking or acting in the following way, “You have made me suffer, so now I will make others to suffer/die, even those who were not involved in causing me to hurt.”
     We must learn better as a human society that bullying, hatefulness, vengeance and violence are not acceptable responses to our encounter with “difference.” We must come to admit that difference, in fact, is an expression of the richness of humanity, created by God. What wonder there is in the world because people see, hear, appear, artistically express, feel, speak, think, etc. in diverse ways! Why would we dare to create obstacles, or worse, for such diversity to exist?
     God has been, is now, and will be with the people of Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and every other place that God’s creatures live. God will be with us through it all. The challenge for “us” is to recognize that there is only “US” and there is no “THEM” in God’s eyes.