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So after last week’s commentary on the recent tragedies in the NFL, the subject I most wanted to avoid this week is death.

Sadly, the horrific and overwhelming events at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT this past week have pretty much made that impossible.

What I would like to do today is focus – not so much on death, but on life because life is bigger and larger than what happens here in our limited time on earth.

As a Christian, my faith teaches me that, although my body and flesh will cease to function one day, my essence will live on and experience the magnificence of heaven.

In fact, five days from now, we Christians celebrate this very concept of eternal life on the most cherished and holy day of the year.

I want to talk about this because, to be quite honest, I’m not sure what I could say that would even begin to appropriately address the magnitude of the grief, the horror and the impact of the Newtown Massacre on the parents of the victims, the family, community, and on all of us and when our words fall short, this is often when our faith takes over.

As a parent and a person of faith, I refuse to believe the lives of those 26 people, 20 of them children, have lost their essence.

We must continue to acknowledge them and celebrate them, not for their tragic deaths, but for their brief and precious lives here on earth, and their ongoing presence with us in the spiritual realm.

We must also hold up their families with our prayers and our giving… they’re going to need us right now… The United Way has set up a Sandy Hook Elementary School fund that you can connect with via their site at unitedway.org… search for “Sandy Hook…”

Finally, I want to offer you this anonymous poem in hopes it will comfort someone, with the knowledge that our loved ones never truly die as long as we keep their memories and their spirits alive.

It’s called When God Calls Little Children:

   When God calls little children, to dwell with Him above

we mortals sometime question the wisdom of His love

For no heartache compares with, the death of one small child

who does so much to make our world, seem wonderful and mild.

Perhaps God tires of calling the aged to his fold

so He picks a rosebud before it can grow old

God knows how much we need them, and so He takes but few

to make the land of Heaven more beautiful to view

Believing this is difficult, still somehow we must try

the saddest word mankind knows, will always be “Goodbye”

So when a little child departs, we who are left behind,

must realize how much God loves children

because Angels are hard to find.

Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.