I’m back. Pleased to announce I finished book #6. It’s at the publishing company in the queue for review. Hoping for its release by early Fall. Many days I’ve wanted to sit and write about the pressing issues of our times, but the Holy Spirit kept me on point. “Finish your book,” it would whisper, and I’d suppress the urge to blog. My publisher in essence told me to take a break and for me the best break is Peace in His Presence.
The front page of today’s paper tore at my heart. Two horrific tragedies whose commonality was the untimely tap of Death. A twenty-eight-year-old former student of a private Christian school in Tennessee was killed by authorities as she was in the midst of a shooting rampage that killed three school employees and three nine-year-old children. Dozens of immigrants housed in a detention center on the border between the US and Mexico died in a fire some of them supposedly set that grew beyond their ability to contain, and the guards were unwilling to open the doors that would have allowed them to escape the flames.
As spectators to these events so prevalent today that we’ve have grown numb to the “breaking news” banners of them scrolling on our screens, we struggle to understand why they keep occurring. Has violence, especially gun-caused violence and indifference to human suffering become such a norm that the best we can muster is a shrug and a silent prayer?
Surely within our various skill sets and assorted toolboxes are answers and strategies that can positively address and reverse these perverted behaviors. A society that sends and returns men and women to and from far- away planets, and daily invents medicines to cure diseases of every sort seems capable enough. So, if it’s not an issue of capability, what is the stronghold that keeps us locked in this cycle of unprovoked shootings, untimely deaths, vigils, GoFundMe entreaties, days of public mourning, tearful television pleas, and funeral services until the cycle ends and another begins?
Might it be we individually and collectively have forgotten we’re in this thing called life together; that we all travel a road from the womb to the grave; that irrespective of ethnicity, skin tone, address, education, language, religion, gender, age, we are human beings together on this planet. We are responsible for one another. What happens or doesn’t happen to one affects the other.
The God I serve created us in His image. That image is not all that complicated. It is the image of love. Love and respect for each other are the starting points. We’re not there yet. I believe we can move in the direction that will us lead there. With God’s grace and mercy and love, let us begin.