This week, the first of the dozen funerals which must take place to bury Derrick Bird’s victims provided a focus for a grieving Cumbrian community, still raw from the shock of last week’s tragic events.  Bird was normal taxi driver, a sociable man. He lived a simple life, a regular at his local pub where he enjoyed a pint days before he turned his gun on neighbours, colleagues and his twin. What made his crime so chilling was the lust for blood which seemed to take over after the original premeditated killings of brother, colleagues and solicitor took place. Bird, a divorced father of two who had recently become a grandfather, had been a man of hidden anger – an anger fuelled, it seems, by worries about a tax bill on €72,000 of undeclared income, his mother’s cancer and breaches of taxi-rank rules. Crucially, he was also bitter and paranoid about what would happen to the estate of his mother, after her death, believing that his twin brother, David, had gained unfair advantage with the help of Commons the solicitor. It has emerged that Bird, who murdered 12 people before taking his own life, watched Steven Seagal’s movie “On Deadly Ground” the night before launching his murderous spree. The violence in this 1994 film is considerably less that many more recent movies but the ease with which lives are taken makes killing seem normal in the fantasy world of cinema. What has the Bible to say about such a tragedy? The best know premeditated murder in scripture was as St Matthew records, “all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death”. Here was premeditated murder by those who had a vested interest in taking out someone who threatened their corrupt way of life. Did they know who this Jesus was? Did their hatred blind them to His identity? Had they any idea that He was the fulfillment of all that their law and prophets spoke of?  Even in his death the common criminal next to Him recognised Jesus as the King about to come into His kingdom and at that moment the thief became a citizen of it. Sadly the death of Derrick Bird is more akin to Judas who, having betrayed Jesus, hung himself.  Two deaths, two destinies. The fate of the 12 victims only reinforces the need to be prepared. Recognise Jesus for who He is and put your trust in Him.