reaping what we sow
It's taken me several days to digest what happened at Virginia Tech. I have a son in high school and a daughter in college. (We have had this discussion several times.) Maybe it was one of those unconscious, self-preservation things.
On Tuesday morning, at 7:00 am I was sitting in a coffee shop fuming because for the second day in a row there was no work and the home PC was acting up. In the back sitting area of the coffee shop a group of police officers were meeting. It was the day after the shootings in Virginia and they were stressing the importance of talking to someone about what you see and experience on the job. They were there to support one another. I wondered what they might see in this small town and then remembered my days as a rape advocate and even as a school teacher.
On Wednesday morning American Family Radio came out with a recording called The Day They Kicked God Out of the Schools. They played it all day. By Wednesday night NBC had released footage of the shooters last words. He called himself "a martyr like Jesus Christ" and spoke of the Columbine shooters by their first names.
When I taught at Pearl we had class meetings most mornings. We talked about what the kids saw in their world. We had to. Sometimes they were ticked off. Most of the time they wanted answers. There was so much unfairness. They would ask, "Why I gotta follow the rule when they don't (a teacher, a parent, a police officer) and don't nothing happen to them?" I wanted so much to tell them about God and how much he loved them. I wanted to say. "There will be justice and you better be on the right side of it" and hold them tight, but I wasn't allowed to.
