“They took God out of schools. We need to add prayer back in.”
We call ourselves the Christians
Then shouldn’t we believe?
Believe that no one ever takes God and prayer away from us because men do not get to tell God where He can and cannot go, and we carry Him with us by the very nature of our faith.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” -Deuteronomy 31:6
Believe He is always there. He will never leave. No one took Him out of some brick and mortar building. No one can.
Not with an AR-15
Not with Standardized Tests
Not by sitting a six-year-old born in Maine next to a six-year-old born in Mexico and teaching them both how to add two-digit numbers
No amount of begrudgingly mumbled Our Father’s after the Pledge of Allegiance (or not mumbled) will sway His plans in a certain direction. Certainly not because we think a group of men who are against God wanted it that way, so they took the prayers from us and drove our God away. That really isn’t how this works. Please don’t believe human hands have that much power over deity. When you are called to pray, pray. No one can stop you.
Believe He did not and will never choose to walk away from dying children because they didn’t say their Hail Mary’s loud enough last Tuesday before the first period, or the Commandments were written on their hearts instead of their walls. (I used these examples because I assume you are only referring to Christian prayers and that you might be upset if your Christian child was told that the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, was now a mandatory part of her school day. I have found that the “my” is usually implied with statements such as these. “We need to add [my kind of] prayer into the day.”) Mandatory Christian prayer forcefully enacted upon all is not a viable American solution.
It is a hard thing for us to understand. We never will. There is no sense in senseless tragedy.
Yet I will ask you to Believe.
Truly Believe.
He was there, every time.
He was there to steady the shaking hands of teachers locking doors.
He was there whispering, “Don’t do this. I can show you another way. I can love you, even now. Especially now. Come to me when you feel broken, the answer is not hiding in those bullets” in the ear of the shooter who broke his Father’s heart when he chose not to listen.
He was there to weep each time shots were fired
He was there helping terrified kindergarteners not to make a single noise
He was there with administrators in the form of intuition to go against protocol and end up saving lives
He was there to guide frantic parents through traffic and hysteria in time to say goodbye
He was there with a heavy heart and outstretched arms to carry his children home and take away the pain of collapsing lungs and bleeding limbs
He was there to save the many and grieve the precious few whose stories He would take beyond those walls for decades, maybe even centuries
He was there to listen to the silent prayers that radiated toward Him in waves from darkened rooms as children huddled under tables and in closets
He was there with doctors and nurses who wanted to collapse into their own grief but were given the strength to heal instead
He was there with journalists and photographers to give them the stamina to tell the same story, again and again, never stop telling it until there aren’t any more victims to photograph.
Make the world see.
He was there with responding officers making the hardest judgment calls
He was there with therapists and guidance counselors working to help children process the unfathomable
He was there to lift the voices of high school students to a world stage to fight against injustice
He was there in text messages between siblings
He was there in reunions between loved ones
Please do not tell me they took him out of schools. When you do that you are saying you believe men are more powerful than God. It is laughable that any human heart could make such a decision for Him, and it is just not true. The God I believe in does not walk away from his children simply because someone took down a plaque or started praying silently from the heart rather than publicly through rote memorization.
I know He was there. He was there through every normal Thursday afternoon social studies lesson, and he was there on the darkest days. And as He held his dying children and absorbed the primal screams of their mothers, who shouted his name from their knees on the asphalt outside the building, I simply don’t believe that the God of the Universe ever looked around at what had become of us and said to himself
“What we need here is more guns.”
Some thoughts are good and pure, and some ideas come from The Enemy
Can we decipher which is which? This is the challenge of our lifetime.
Guns against guns is the only answer
We can’t afford to let everybody in anymore
They don’t have the right form signed, send them away from my country and back to violent abuse. If they can’t follow the procedure, they don’t deserve a chance. I don’t care why.
Don’t pay attention to the voices of the children who are victims, they are only children. Maybe even actors. They just want attention for their cause.
I’m sorry to hear that, but what does it have to do with me?
I don’t like the way he treats people, but the stock market is back up and we need the money
Those people voted a certain way, so therefore they are evil
The politics are irrelevant and ever-changing. The morality is not. As we cycle through different leaders from different parties, these things will still be wrong. These are not Christian thoughts or actions as I understand my own religion. And they are not American ideals as I understand my own country.
And more of us need to say so.
Believe it is our turn to stand up for victims and to authority and be strong and courageous, and to realize that whatever rules of faith we apply to ourselves should apply to others as well.
Jesus loves them, this I know, for the Bible told me so
Little ones to him belong, they are week but he is strong…yes, Jesus loves them. The Bible told me so.
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