Two Black Balls

Anchor as used on the first Royal Navy
nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought,
at Anchor Walk, National Maritime
Museum, Greenwich, UK

Submarines have anchors. The old fleet boats carried their anchors against the bow, just like surface ships do today. But for the modern nuclear submarine which is designed to operate submerged most of the time, this would add too much drag, so the anchor is housed inside a ballast tank, and the bottom of the anchor is flush with the hull when housed.
Submarines don't like to use their anchors. They have a nasty habit of not coming back up when we try to hoist them, and since they are stored in a place we can't get to, there's nothing we can do about if anything goes wrong. On one of my boats, we were supposed to anchor overnight outside Port Said in preparation for the next morning's transit of the Suez Canal. Instead, we lowered our outboard motor, and used it to stay in the same spot. This was just as well, because a huge ship transporting new cars had trouble communicating with port control, and ended up trying to anchor where we were, so we had to scoot out of the way rather quickly.

Speaking of anchors, in the book Think, Act, Be Like Jesus, which we are using in Sunday School this year, Randy Frazee opens the chapter on Hope with Hebrews 6:19-20. In preparing for this lesson, I got to thinking about the anchor as an analogy for hope, or faith. The basic premise, as I understand it, is that when we are beset by the storms of life, we can set down our anchor of hope on the firm ground of faith, and ride out the storm.

This is an excellent analogy, so let's run with it.

Fifty hearts will pulse no more

Early Sunday morning, Omar Mateen walked into a (gay) nightclub in Orlando and opened fire. Before police were able to get into the nightclub and kill Mateen, he had killed 49 people and injured over 50. For now, it is America's worst mass shooting ever.
And so the blame game starts. Many blame the gun, and call for better gun control. Many blame Islam, and call for banning Muslims from entering the country. Some even blame the lack of prayer in schools.
All of these responses are wrong. (OK, I like the idea of gun control, but it's futile until we can convince congress that they don't have to do the politically correct thing: avoid in any way offending the NRA.)
So how are we to respond?