Mass shootings are big stories that generate outrage. This is an appropriate response to the death of innocent people. How could someone be so alienated from humanity to take the lives of strangers? Yet more people die by suicide, and this does not generate such a strong response. How could someone be so alienated from humanity as to take their own life? These questions are more similar than different. No organ can survive apart from the body that gives it life, and the same principle applies to people that I describe as members of a body.

Everyone who seeks the truth hears my voice, and he who seeks will find. Do you know people who seem to be honestly seeking something, even if they don’t know what it is? Let your light shine before them to help them to see the truth. Someone else’s path may be different from yours, and this is OK. You don’t have to force them on a path that is not theirs. Based on the promises above you can be confident that their search will lead to me. Does this seem like a strong statement for a universal rule? But I have powerful forces at my disposal to guide honest seekers to me.

Have you heard of grateful alcoholics? Alcohol has devastated the lives of many, and recovery from the effects of this addiction is a long and painful process. So is there anything here to be grateful for? Those who describe themselves this way would say that this path, even with the pain and suffering it involves, has brought them to a greater expression of humanity and spirituality than they would have had without it. And so they are grateful in spite of the pain and suffering. How do you view the difficult aspects of your own life? Do you resent them?

Have you ever heard anyone say, I will only trust in God and believe in God; I will never trust or believe in people? Does this sound more righteous, or self-righteous, or bitter to you? There is a sense in which it is appropriate to trust and believe in me alone; people will disappoint you. Yet you cannot fulfill my destiny for you if you remain in suspicious isolation. You cannot form the human connections you need to be a part of my body or to engage in a cause greater than yourself if you refuse to trust people. You are well aware of the risks of believing in and trusting people.