What’s Brewing – No Other Name
It was a good day. Not a great day. Just good. The kind of good that melts
into other good days and gives us that peaceful feeling that life, in this little sequence of time is – good. Until it’s not, because on October 1st, good was replaced by tragic. Nine victims dead. Nine injured. And while their cries joined together in a requiem of terror, the one with the gun died in a futile declaration of ruthless independence.
Unable to comprehend it all, I stared at the TV as if the story would end, like an episode of Blue Bloods, with the family all sitting around their Sunday dinner, laughing, munching, and looking forward to a new week with another feel good ending. But for nine families in Roseburg, there will always be an empty place at the table, while the nine who lived bear the scars that mark the places where bullets shot through their sense of security and left them with memories they will never be able to forget. Roseburg has fallen into the rank and file of yet another school shooting. And the pain of our nation has again been divided between our right to bear arms and our fear of guns, while the question the shooter asked his victims hovers over us, “What religion are you?”
Today, I am of the religion that says, while I believe the Constitution of the United States of America to be a brilliant document, cultivated in the soil of Biblical principles, I live by a higher standard than the parchment on which it was written. I am of the religion that believes personal rights can never guarantee personal freedom and liberty isn’t won by law but by grace. I’m of the religion whose enemies don’t live on the other side of political debate, but, on the dark side of spiritual power. I’m of the religion whose cause is Christ and whose purpose is to make God look good in all I do and think and say.
Therefore, if my neighbors believes that extending the laws of gun control will help them sleep at night and wake up in the morning believing their children are safer, because insanity has been disarmed, then it is my duty, according what I believe, to surrender to them the opportunity to try it and see. And if by chance, stricter gun control curbs the violence in our streets, shopping malls, churches, and schools, then my religion will , with unbiased freedom and deep humility, say, “You were right and I was wrong.” However, if the incidents remain the same, or increase, may my religion never allow me the freedom to say, “I told you so.”
And should I be forced to answer the question, “What religion are you?”
I pray I will have the courage to say, in the spirit of countless men, women, and children, who have died, and continue to die, before me, “I have no religion, but Jesus.”
Love and joy, Sandy
What’s Brewing – No Other Name was first posted on October 18, 2015 at 8:04 am.
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