Because We Can't Protect Them

This probably won't come as a surprise to you, but as a young mother I was something of a worry wart  Not a helicopter parent, necessarily, but one who never let the tether out too far lest some sort of danger befall her daughters.

We sent the girls to a tiny Christian school, mostly for the distinctly Christian education that they would receive but also because I thought it was the place where the girls would be the most safe.

Of course, the worrying didn't stop there either. Tiny little Christian schools, you see, aren't governed by the mandates of the state. They aren't required to have regular fire drills and tornado drills and lock down plans for masked intruders.

And I thought that they ought to.

Toward that end I was a royal pain in the headmaster butt.  I harangued him incessantly about the need for  preparation plans in the face of impending doom.  I wasn't alone, either. I had a group of fellow hovercrafts to back me up, the most vocal of which was my friend Marsha, a women affectionately called "the holy spirit" because of her uncanny ability to speak out the heart of God.

And then one day, a lone shooter walked through the front doors of a church in Dallas, Texas. Without so much as a pause, he began to open fire on unsuspecting Christians gathering for a time of prayer and study.

I was already in bed that evening when I got a call from Marsha.

"Debbie," she said. "We can't keep them safe.   If we're not safe in God's own house, we're not safe anywhere.  We can have all the drills and lock downs we want, and we'll still never be able to give them earthly security.   Our job is the more important one.  If I drop my little girl  at school tomorrow morning, and she doesn't come home in the afternoon, I want to know that I know... that I know that I know...  she's with the Father in Heaven."

She was right of course.

Guns don't kill, and actually people don't kill either. People are just the willing or unwilling accomplices of Satan, the one who comes to kill, steal and destroy. Since God himself is no respecter of persons, why in the world do we expect Satan to be?  He's nothing but a counterfeit god after all, a sloppy copy of the Real Deal who desires nothing more in this world than to break the heart of the Father and crush the spirit of his children.

He did an excellent job of it on Friday, didn't he?

What kind of a world do we live in, where a person would walk into an elementary school and gun down 20 tiny children and their teachers too?

A dark one.

(But) the people who walk in darkness will see a great light.

 Those who walk in the shadow of death, on them will light shine. 

~ Isaiah 9:2.

Praying that the Light of God will pierce the darkness in Newtown, Connecticut this day; that every family will feel His presence tabernacling among them, and that they will know that they know... that they know that they know,  the God of Heaven loves them with an everlasting love.

*****

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