By Barbara Howard

Tragedies over the past few weeks since when natural disaster Hurricane Harvey decimated Houston, Texas to the mass shooting in Las Vegas make me remember, like Lee Williams and the Spiritual QCs sing so emotionally, “I’ve got so much to be thankful for.”

When I woke up this morning (October 2, 2017), I had no idea of the latest tragedy until I received a call from a friend in the Middle East who brought me the bad news of the horrific massacre in Vegas.

October 1, 2017 will go down in history as the darkest day in Las Vegas when a seemingly ordinary man became an extraordinary monster who shot and killed 59 innocent people and wounded 527 others who did nothing more than to go to a country music festival. It’s being called the worst tragedy in modern U.S. history.

As I watched the endless news conferences and heard the fantastic stories of heroism of first responders as well as ordinary citizens who risked their lives to shield others or help them to safety, I was visibly moved, especially when President Trump’s Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders talked about some of those acts of heroism and quoted a passage from the Bible, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 (KVJ)

But as some of us mourned with the victims of this senseless tragedy, others did what they do best, spouted off stupid divisive comments placing blame without evidence.

News great, FOX News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume, asked, “Can we not have a day in which we mourn this horrible thing as a nation, we feel sympathy for the victims, we mourn their loss, we feel pride and, indeed, admiration for the people who rushed to try to salvage this situation to the extent possible, the lives that were saved, and even perhaps the lives that were lost, before we engage in some very divisive debate over an issue on which there has been no agreement in this country for a very long time?”

Seems not. First thing this morning Hillary Clinton tweeted blaming the NRA.

But the worst thing I heard was a quote from one of CBS’ top lawyers who since has been fired for her obscene comments. Former Vice President and Senior Counsel Hallie Geftman-Gold tweeted that the Las Vegas shooting victims didn’t deserve any sympathy because country music fans are often gun-toting Republicans.

Wow! The victims of the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history don’t even deserve sympathy? Such hatred! Such vitriol! Some witnesses claim it was worse than any scenes they saw in Iraq.

Add that to the horrific scenes we’ve seen coming in from the hurricane-ravaged islands of Puerto Rico, Dominica, the Virgin Islands, etc. and the city of Houston and others in Texas and Louisiana.

And we can’t forget the horrible scenes of destruction that Irma left in the entire state of Florida. Even the street in front of my house looks like a war zone with all the dead trees and branches that Irma destroyed as she made her way from Key West all the way up the state.

So you can ask yourself if God is punishing America because it seems liberal politicians are moving us away from Christian principles. Or you can run toward the principle of man-made climate change. You can read all the social media posts which want to blame all these problems on Donald Trump.

We know that natural disasters are the work of Mother Nature or better yet, God.

But while we don’t know the reason a supposedly rich man took 10 – 20 guns and hundreds of ammunition into a luxury hotel to rein evil on 22,000 fun-loving individuals, we do know that none of these recent tragedies had anything to do with race, religion or political beliefs.

And for those who want to blame guns for the Vegas tragedy, we could very well all be living in Chicago, otherwise known as “Chi-Raq” for its constant gun violence in spite of strict gun laws, where already