LEAST
Today marks the seventh anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. Of the twenty children killed that day, none were older than seven. Most were six.
Can we even begin to let that sink in? These beloved ones were some of the least among us.
Least: smallest, very little, very small.1
There have been at least 2,320 mass shootings since Sandy Hook, with at least 2,631 killed and 9,666 wounded.2
Such a staggering number. How can we continue to look away?
At least: at the minimum.3
‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me’ (Matthew 25:44-45).
With our inaction, we deem these little ones unimportant. When we look away from them, we look away from Jesus himself.
Least: in importance, in the estimation of men [sic].4
Seven years since Sandy Hook. Twenty years since Columbine. On Valentine’s Day of 2020, it will be two years since Parkland.
Let today be the day we finally stop sacrificing the least among us.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Forgive our sin. Change our hearts. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Amen.