My failure.....

Thank you all. I really needed what you guys said. My heart is lighted by.all your words.

Here in lies what troubled my belief in a God vs in the Force.

As a Christian, I hear of these things and wonder how an all knowing, all powerful, benevolent God could let this happen to a child.

As a believer in the Force, I now understand that the path that each of us take, is OUR path and NO ONE else's! We are guided by the energy of the Force and the subtleties of its influence, but we direct and follow our own way.

There is no influence you could have made on the outcome of this event. The paths of each person, although close in geographic proximity, are separated by countless variables.

Rest easy in your unnecessary guilt, there is only one person who is at fault for this child's death, and their evil will be dealt with in time.

Phortis Nespin wrote: Here in lies what troubled my belief in a God vs in the Force.

As a Christian, I hear of these things and wonder how an all knowing, all powerful, benevolent God could let this happen to a child.

As a believer in the Force, I now understand that the path that each of us take, is OUR path and NO ONE else's! We are guided by the energy of the Force and the subtleties of its influence, but we direct and follow our own way.

There is no influence you could have made on the outcome of this event. The paths of each person, although close in geographic proximity, are separated by countless variables.

Rest easy in your unnecessary guilt, there is only one person who is at fault for this child's death, and their evil will be dealt with in time.

You had me for most of this post up until the last phrase: "...and their evil will be dealt with in time."

How do we know that?

What I've come to believe about the Force is that as inspiring and wonderful that it is, it is ultimately uncaring and moves along like a river unperturbed by our virtues or vices...

Curious your thoughts on that.

Time is relative.

Their evil will be dealt with in time

does not just mean in the context of years, months, days, hours, and minutes, but in the universal time, the time in which the Force is the timekeeper, or should I say...timeless keeper. This is where I believe the Force balances all good and evil. They say time heals all things, I believe time gives us the opportunity to see both sides of a story or the good things in life as well as the bad, in order to balance our perspectives.

Whether the person who perpetrated this act is brought to justice by humans or not, the evil will be dispersed into the universal consciousness where it will be equalized by good. I believe this is the way the Force balances all things. Because the Force does not know good or evil, but only balance, it will find the equal and opposite of the evil causing them to offset each other.

It seems that nature is always looking for ways to be in balance, and I believe nature is a reflection of the workings of the Force. Because Nature acts by "instinct", not knowing good or bad and that things just happen because of the circle of life, I surmise the Force is the same.

Another thought...

When you throw dirty water into a river, does the river not equalize the dirty water with the water already contained? I believe this is the effect the Force has on all things. Balance must be maintained.

Balance is always returned....

If you want to take anything from your experience, take this: use this unfortunate event as fuel, let it drive you to be more vigilant (watchful), to be more aware of your surroundings, to train yourself to act instead of react, to prepare for a variety of scenarios...by that I don't mean you have to go jumping into the fray if it's not your strength, there are cameras, cell phones, camera phones, law enforcement....plan and play to your strengths...

This was not your failure, it is the failure of the perpetrator's morality....balance will return...karma has a funny way of coming back around...

I'm curious what the rest of you would do? Perhaps we can all learn from this and prepare ourselves mentally for things like this. OK so you hear a scream in the woods... what do you do next?
Call the cops? No signal
Grab a gun? You stopped carrying it because they aren't necessary
Go marching off into the dark woods to rescue someone from a murderer?
GTFO?

We can what if any situation to death. From the way you are limiting options, you must be looking for limited answers.

Rickie The Grey wrote:

ferreire580 wrote: Thirteen year old Jasmine Cruz was killed in the woods that night.

OMG Where did this happen? Sad so very sad.

Did this happen in PA where you live? Got a link?

I have family in Pa.

I can't find anything for "Jasmine Cruz" googling it or in news except a model.

I don't know why its not on the news yet. It didn't even see it in the paper. It happened in the town next to me in Whitehall/Coplay.

ferreire580 wrote: I don't know why its not on the news yet. It didn't even see it in the paper. It happened in the town next to me in Whitehall/Coplay.

You need to let the police know what you heard. I found the article and they're calling it a suicide.
Jasmin Flores 13 year old