The preliminary reports boggle the mind. ABC News is reporting that at least 27 people are dead in today's school shooting in Newton, Conn. -- "or more." More? How many more people can a deranged person kill before he's stopped?
There's nothing we can say on a sports blog, nothing anyone can say that will make any sense of this tragedy. Even to people of faith like myself, events like today can seem incomprehensible. Perhaps Steven Curtis Chapman put it best in his song "With Hope," written about another of the too-many school shootings in our nation's history: "And Never Have I Known / Anything So Hard To Understand / And Never Have I Questioned More / The Wisdom Of God's Plan."
But Chapman also voices a hope in that song: "I See The Father's Smile And Say Well Done / And I Imagine You / Where You Wanted Most To Be / Seeing All Your Dreams Come True / 'Cause Now You're Home / And Now You're Free." And even to those who aren't religiously inclined, there is still a cause for some hope: We will get through this. We always do.
That said, there is still something wrong with our country. Whether you want to believe it comes from our nation's gun laws, or a sickness within our culture or some other cause, there is something wrong with our country when two men can walk into a school and end so many lives too soon -- and all of them, children and adults, were cut far too short. Today is probably not the day to discuss and respectfully debate those issues -- but tomorrow is. We have to talk about this soon. We should have already been talking about it.
And today is not a day for sports; here or anywhere else. Today, instead, is a day for tears and prayers and sympathy. There's no empathy from those who haven't been in a situation like this before, because none of us can understand enough to empathize. All we can do is hope for better days ahead. Because one more day like today is one more day too many.