Keeping the Dream

A reporter asked a young Amish boy what the adults told him the afternoon of the shooting in the one room Amish school house in PA. That was his reply.

There’s no doubt that in the midst of the pain and grief, the Amish will be the first to extend comfort and condolences to the gunman’s family.

There is a tremendous sense of loss as a community that separates itself from the world, finds that world infringing upon them in the most evil of ways, and there is a sense of awe as I realize that these murders will not kill the essence of who the Amish are.

I don’t know that I would be ready to do that, to forgive, but I do know that that is the ideal the Amish hold and if they can, then how can I do less, but to hold that ideal for myself?

Perhaps I will have to travel a longer journey to arrive at forgiveness’ door, but tonight the Amish faith convicts me to hold to that commitment, no matter how long it takes.

I hold the children in my prayers. I hold every hurting soul in my prayers. I hold a society that feeds off of violence and does not understand when violence erupts in my prayers. And I ask that we, as a people, will be jolted out of complacency and be moved to assess and act to implement changes of significance, so that those little girls in Nickel Mines, PA will not have died in vain.

Demian,
~DreamSinger