Dig Deeper Texas

I started to write a year in review but I have a terrible sense of time. I sometimes think things that happened last week happened months ago and vice versa so I couldn’t even begin to try to list things that happened in 2006 because my brain just doesn’t work that way. I decided instead to focus on the one story from last year that touched me the most, the school shooting in Lancaster County on October 2nd. It wasn’t the school shooting itself, which was the 4th in 30 days, it was the Amish response. They embraced the shooters widow and family immediately and sent out words of forgiveness and it touched us all. We have seen far too much violence in this country and this is the first time in recent years we have seen such selfless mercy. The Amish attended the shooters funeral, not to stomp the grave but to sincerely mourn his passing. It was astounding watching the scene unfold.

CNN.com - Amish grandfather: ‘We must not think evil of this man’ - Oct 4, 2006:

Jack
Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in
Lancaster County, said local people were trying to follow Jesus’
teachings in dealing with the “terrible hurt.” “I don’t think there’s
anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach
out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to
the family of the man who committed these acts,” he told CNN.

We learned more from the Amish about responding to violence this year than any other time I can remember. They demolished the school 10 days later and seeded the field immediately. You wouldn’t know there had been anything on the site before. They did it as a community and it only took a few hours.

Lancaster Online.com: News : Grief & forgiveness:

The
Amish are keenly aware that their response to this tragedy —
immediately forgiving Roberts, meeting with his widow, comforting his
children, attending his funeral — has made a huge impact.”The name of Jesus is being spread all over the world through this,’’
acknowledged an Amish man near Georgetown. He stroked his beard and
smiled. “Isn’t that something?’’ he exclaimed. “It’s ironic. We, as a
backward people, are showing the way toward forgiveness.’’

I have been living in, Texas, the heart of Evangelical land, for far too long. I had come to a place where the label “Christian” held horribly negative connotations because the loudest in my area are filled with hate and preach it daily. This reminded me that isn’t what Christianity is about and I hope it touched the hate-mongers as much as me. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-faith nor am I anti-Christian, I am anti-hate in any form. It was a good thing to be reminded that not all Christians are full of hate. There are many good people of faith, sadly, their voices are drowned out by the hate-mongers. I am sure they cringe as much as I do when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson speak.

So, that is my year in review. Next year we have been up for a full year so I will have our own archives to pull from for the stories that touched me but this year that is the only one that my memory chooses to remember.

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Filed under: Charity, Christians, amish, forgiveness