Water

Let rivers of living water flow, from the tear ducts of our eyes.

We are united to Christ in his suffering for sin. We weep in him.

We also laugh in him, because we know the end. Death inevitably kills itself. The power of death was killed by Christ's death, and the very existence of death will have been killed by Christ's death when he returns in victory to make the world new. All the pain and suffering will, at that end, somehow, someway, inexplicably, by the power of God, kill itself and give way to the glory of God.

That day is not yet come, and so we do still weep. Evil is still evil, but it will not be allowed to remain in this world, because this world, ultimately, is God's. Though it is under the power of the prince of darkness now, he has no more power over it than he did over Job, whom he had to ask permission from God in order to be able to take even one ox from. Yet evil is a shadow. It will pass away in the light of the dawn of the coming of the King. We are Christians, we ought to feel the most pain in this, yet also the most joy in the good that flows from it. We ought to be the most even-tempered, bipolar, stoic, passionate people on the face of this earth.

Leave just the spiritual evil:
--An affront to God's image in us. However blemished that image is by the fall, there is enough that God sent his only Son to remove that blemish from us.
--A man cutting himself off from all hope of redemption.
--People tempted, some certainly falling to the temptation, to call God unjust, unloving, impotent, or finite. They were children, how much more innocent can you get!? Even allowing for original sin: were these worse than others? They're guns, how much easier to stop can you get? They can jam! There are already those who say he did not stop it because "he's not allowed in schools." Unloving, impotent, finite, and pretty hard to argue that that is a just god, too. I'd rather a loving, just, omnipotent God who is called a jerk than this "gentleman god."

So we must cry for this, even as we cry with others for all the physical and psychological evil.

Leave just the spiritual good:
--Proof of the moral worth of humans beings. No one would dare say "they were just children." The reaction to this is many times greater than if they had been any other form of animal life.
--An opportunity for Christians to show how much they desire that many would inherit the life everlasting, and to declare the mercies of God to even the worst of sinners. We ought to openly cry because of Adam Lanza's sin and even more his death, since it cuts him off from any possibility of reconciliation of God.
--People are seeking answers to this, surely some will find God to be the answer.

So we must rejoice in this.

Bipolar, just... both at the same time.

Crying dehydrates. Christ is the living water, "but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:14. Perhaps this is beyond what is warranted by the text, but he is, nevertheless, our sustenance in suffering. We cannot carry this pain alone, we must, and can only, carry it in Christ who carried all our pain and is making all things right. As we are made right in Christ, so the world is made right in him. As we are being sanctified, so the world is being made new. Ours is not despair, it is sorrow and hope and joy unexplainable.

The victory is won, it is accomplished, Christ has accomplished the victory to come. There is no question, Christ shall return in victory over the world and establish his kingdom of life over it, which shall have no end. Our joy is unshakeable, for it is found in our unshakeable union with Christ the king. Stoic, but in a fully loving way. Indeed, it is this joy which enables us to love, since our happiness is found in Christ, not in what others think, or in some other thing which humans could take away. No, our children are not our joy, and so our joy is not shaken by this. Yet our sorrow is still stirred by it, because it is an affront to our God whom we love. These were made in the image of God, yet they were murdered. Christ, too, broken for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. Sorrow and joy. Love. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity!