Boston Marathon - Part 2 of 3, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Barely a week ago, I stood on Boylston Street at the Marathon finish line and watched the wheelchair competitors, the women's elite runners, and the men's elite runners cross the finish line.  I watched and felt their thrill of victory, their pride at accomplishing a dream, overcoming a difficult challenge.  Then I left and wandered around other parts of the Marathon and downtown areas.  I didn't know that in just over two hours, the first bomb would explode right where I had been standing.

A week later, the sidewalk site of the first bomb blast near the finish line has been reopened to foot traffic.

The concrete repairs are still drying as pedestrians walk quietly by the site where the first bomb exploded.

A hard-won medal from a Marathon runner has been left here as a tribute to the memory of the dead and injured.

Windows still need to be replaced following the blasts.

And we look on contemplating the incomprehensible violence.

But there runs deeply through everyone here, "Boston Strong," a hope for a better day, a better time perhaps, when we no longer feel the need to kill or main each other.  As 8-year old victim Martin Richard wrote a year ago, "No more hurting people. Peace."

How does a human being commit such a heinous and unbelievable act - to construct and then leave a bomb within a crowd, a bomb solely designed to kill and maim innocent people.  Someone who commits this act simply is not human by my understanding of what humanity is and is not.  Such evil defies comprehension much less understanding.

How does one cross that line into madness that makes committing such an act okay in his mind - to justify some extraordinarily sick belief that murder and mayhem are worthy acts within his perverted belief system.

How do they do what they do in the name of a God?  For that matter, how has humanity done much of what it's done in the name of a God for thousands of years? So many of these acts are an affront to the meaning of Godliness. 

The concrete is still drying after workers replace the sidewalk areas damaged by the bomb blast. The stain of blood and other signs of carnage are gone.  But we will never forget.  The concrete hardens as does our resolve to never give in to terror - "We are Boston Strong" - and we will be back next year for the Boston Marathon.