My Prayers to the Virginia Tech Victims and Their Families

There are some days that go down in History, that everyone remembers because of the depth of the day. Unfortunately, these days are usually connected to tragedies. Yesterday, Monday, April 16, 2007, was one such day when a shooter entered the Virginia Tech school and killed 32 people, injured 27 more, and then himself.

As our nation is left in breathless horror we concentrate on the severity of the situation. I heard a statistic that said that of all the tragic school shootings around the world, most are preformed by
outsiders, by older adults. Yet in America, the perpetrator is most often a student who attended the school. Facts such as these linked with occurrences such as the one that happened yesterday lead to unrest and general distraught.

It's truly horrible to think that one student could be bullied and depressed enough to think of killing, but to know that he then carried it out and took the lives of 32 other people while affecting the lives of 27 more is even more horrendous. What would anyone do if they were put through any specific circumstances, and how will we ever be able to know what those circumstances were.

But we are left to grieve, fear, wonder, and mourn for those whose lives have been taken or directly affected. For you see, any decent human would have been affected by the almost incomprehensible happenings of yesterday.

But from this too there is still more to wonder. In Iraq people die everyday, American citizens are used to hearing death counts on the nightly news. Maybe they will stop and blink or maybe they won't. But they will go on with their lives after a few seconds at most. Are we such a self-centered, numb nation as to only care about these tragedies if they happen in our backyard? Yes, it seems we are.

We will live on, while others can not. We will push to the back of our minds what others may never be the same. We will mourn, for those who never will again. And then we will forget, we will think of it at times, but it will no longer be important while some still grieve and will always grieve for their loss.

But in these few days we as a nation, and even maybe as a world, will grieve for the distraught families, for the lost lives, and for the dampened faith caused by this tragedy,