Get Behind Me!

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Watching the events unfolding in Paris on television, I began to pray.  How could this be happening?

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you."  But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." - Matthew 16:22-23

I guess I felt a lot like Peter.  I, too, wanted it to stop.  But would Jesus have reprimanded me as well?

Would he have said that these events have to unfold the way they do?

When we hold the belief that God is pulling all the strings, directing us like actors on a stage, events like these shake our faith.

But these are not God's doing.  These are the evils we humans bring upon each other, and what makes them particularly heinous is when we say they are for Him.

As we learn more about the people who conducted these acts, we will seek to come to some sort of peace, some rationale that will allow us to go back to normal, everyday life.

Some will say the world will not return to normal, but they will be wrong.  Just as Paris was back to normal months after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the city will resume its flow, and those who sought to stop the world will have lost.

Get behind me, Satan.  That will be the cry from the streets of Paris as the people take back their city from the grip of fear.

And they will prepare themselves for the next act.

And so must we.

More to come...