Hammer on Anvil '

"A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more" (Matthew 2:18).

When my husband's sister died many years ago at the age of 39, I remember his mother's bitter words, "No parent should ever have to bury their child."

Though I can certainly understand her sentiment, I also understand that we live in a sick, fallen world. Things happen over which we have no control, like what happened at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. Like what happened at Virginia Tech just seven years ago, and at Columbine High School in 1999.

The background of the Scripture I opened with is no less horrific. Herod the Great, in his quest for greatness and his fear that the birth of Jesus would threaten his position, ordered the massacre of all baby boys two years of age and under. I vividly remember Franco Zeffirelli's rendering of this scene in the mini-series "Jesus of Nazareth." Roman soldiers went through the tiny village of Bethlehem with swords drawn, carrying out Herod's monstrous edict. If a mother refused to surrender her child, she was run through as well as the child.

In the Old Testament, Pharoah ordered the midwives to kill baby boys at birth, to cut back on the Israelite population.

It is a mystery why God permits such vicious depravity, particularly when innocent children are the victims. It is a mystery that He loved us so passionately that He gave His only Son -- the most innocent of all -- to die an unspeakably inhumane death. Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today magazine, says, "You would have thought that the Power and the Glory would have stepped in with thunderbolts when the world conspired to kill his Innocent One. But this God did not do anything then either. And the Son did not rage at the cruel injustice and the waste of a good life at the hands of evil men. All he could seem to say was a prayer that his murderers, who he said did not know what they were doing, be forgiven."

Last month, a 33-year-old man left his 22-month-old son helplessly strapped in a car seat in sweltering heat. Even more monstrous is the fact that he intended for the child to die. While his son was suffocating in the car, the man was sexting a teenage girl.

Just last week, a Malaysia Airlines 777 was shot down by terrorists. All 280 passengers and the crew of 15 perished.

When we are faced with atrocities such as this, our first inclination should not be to try to make sense of it. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?" It is also not our responsibility to try to defend God when non-believers taunt us with, "Where was your God when this happened?" God needs no defending.

Our response is illustrated very simply in Romans 12:15; we are to weep with those who weep, and mourn with those who mourn. Pray for the families who are affected. That precious little toddler has grandparents and aunts and uncles. The air travelers were moms, dads, brothers, sisters and children, and those they left behind are in the throes of grief.

In times like this, it helps to remember why Jesus came into this sin-sick world. Yes, He came to die a horrible death. But Mark Galli reminds us it didn't end there:

And the Innocent One wasn't done—far from it. He looked at mad humanity and bloody death and said, Enough is enough. Three days after the world had done its dirtiest work on the most innocent of all, he rolled back the stone and emerged from the grave (smiling, I like to think), as if to say that the death of the innocent is not the last word. Not even close.