When I heard that 20 children were killed by the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, the first thing I did was put up my automatic defense guard – my internal defense mechanism that wards off any emotion, any intense feeling, any trigger points that will open the threshold of pain.  I close off any pockets of anger or resentment or despair because I know it’s going to hurt; I know it’s going to be painful; I know I am going to suffer.

I even thought that maybe if I changed the conversation, I wouldn’t have to suffer; maybe if I changed the channel, I wouldn’t have to look; maybe if I turned my head the other way – I wouldn’t have to see

Charlotte Bacon, 7
David Barden, 7
Olivia Engel, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
Dylan Hockley, 6
Madeleine Hsu, 6
Catherine Hubbard, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Jesse Lewis, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Grace McDonnell, 7
Emilie Parker, 6
Jack Pinto, 6
Noah Pozner, 6
Caroline Previdi 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Avielle Richman, 6
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Allison Wyatt, 6

And then, I heard their voices – actually, I first heard them on Facebook, when I re-posted a photograph of one of the little girls and her family, and I realized that the children are telling us something.

Oh, in the flesh, they had no idea that they would one day put aside their crayons and Dr. Suess and science projects to silently march through the fullness in our throats and the sadness in guts – as soldiers of peace – to tell us in their sweetest, provocative, most angelic voices to listen.

If we really listen, we know that somewhere, in the space and time without dimension, in the divine ethers of infinite possibility and absolute good, they departed with their lives to be ambassadors of eternity so that they could teach humanity an important lesson – the children are telling us something.

They remind us that in Matthew 2:16-18

“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.”

They are saying that when we celebrate this Christmas, we need to remember like Jeremiah – that  “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

They are saying – like Paul told the Corinthians (1^st Corinthians 13:11-12) — “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. [But now I have put] the ways of childhood behind me. “

They are saying – “For now we see face to face, and know [all].”

They are saying like Paul told the Romans [8:36-38],  you may see us as mere sheep to be slaughtered, but we are more than conquerors.

^“For we know that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation has separated us from the love of God.”

The children are telling us something.

They are saying that we should have left the “far country” a long time ago, and gone home.
Until we spend the time as a people and tap in and turn on the peace of God in our consciousness, and know that there is enough manna to feed us and that the endless abundance of God is our birthright we will suffer in the spirit of Herod — the sickness of fear, and poverty, hatred, and guns, and knives, and manners of mass destruction.

They are saying — whatever we give comes back to us in multitudes, so be careful what you give.  Watch what you are hording.  Watch what you are collecting.

Instead of collecting anger, take the time to be love – a love that needs no condition, a love that has no limit, no shame, no blame, no purpose, no agenda.

The children are telling us something.

They are saying that we are so busy partying in the flesh of fear and foolishness that we have found ourselves wrapped in our own paper of forgetfulness, tied up with a ribbon of doubt and a bow of an ignorance that believes we can only save ourselves by killing something else, that we can only be stronger by making someone else weak, that we can only be higher by pushing someone else down, that we can only feel good by making someone else feel bad, that we can only succeed by not giving our best.  The children are telling us something.

They are saying that the only way to walk the water of faith, the only way to penetrate the persistence of doubt, the only way to stay above the fray of fighting and agitation is to release our defenses and un-arm our consciousness of despair.

Read Genesis 1:31, they say – “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

They say that Romans 8:6 is true – that “the mind governed by the flesh is death, but their minds are governed by the Spirit which is eternal life and peace” – but that if we keep killing them, there will be no more us.

They are saying they have wiped a President’s tears who weeps for a world of peace and prosperity and wholeness for everyone – that they have crossed the waters of the land without space, that they have danced over the Jordan of freedom and they have clapped their hands while running through the rooms of their Father’s house, they are saying we are free in a place where there are no .223 Bushmasters, no .10mm Glocks, no .9 mm Sig Sauers, no shooting ranges or hunting rifles or legally acquired, legally registered guns around the mulberry bush, where they study war no more.

They are reciting the words of Romans 8:22, when Paul wrote that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

They say “in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?”

They remind us of truths that we have long forgotten – “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. . . . And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

They are saying that the small caskets that will carry their remains are too small, too limited, too insignificant to carry the souls of children who have not only died in the Sandy Hook massacre but in the bullets that spray every day from drug lords and hit men, in political warfare in countries without democracy, in developing nations without food and health care, in the arms of parents who never saw the drunk drivers coming.

They are saying [John 16:33]: “I am not alone, for my Father is with me.  I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

The children are saying that if we cannot learn from this, there will be other missiles and mishaps and massacres.

In the words of Paul [Romans 8:18], they say:  “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  We are not the only children of God to be revealed.

The best that you can do for us is to liberate yourself from the bondage and decay of your self-imposed limitations and walk as into the freedom and glory of a new day – like the children of God that you are.