I Don’t Want To
11 September 2024
I don’t want to write this WFW. And you probably don’t want to read it. Much easier for both of us to stick our heads in the sand.
But seven days have passed since the school shooting in Winder, Georgia, just 60 miles up the road. (And if our country’s pace of mass shootings for 2024 holds, that means another 11 mass nightmares have ripped apart the lives our fellow Americans since last Wednesday[1]). Anyone who has taken the northern way home from an UGA football game in Athens has passed very close to that school for precious Georgian children since it’s only 1.4 miles off University Parkway.
This WFW does not seek to be political. I deeply value the fact that COS is faith home to both Republicans and Democrats. Such congregations are rare and special places for America these days and we’re always better together! I trust that whatever your politics, you will support action that you think best enacts our Sunday prayers, that the God’s will would be done (more than it currently is) here on earth as it is in heaven—especially for our children.
So let me focus on children in this note to you. Wednesdays are days we invest in our kids at COS. Preschool in the morning, of course. Music and the Master for elementary kids in the afternoon. Skiddles for preschool singers. Then our middle and high schoolers meet at 6 PM for dinner followed by their LOGOS and LOFT discipleship development teaching and sharing time.
After the shooting last Wednesday morning, COS staff and volunteer parents connected quickly via group text. One parent asked specifically if we could avoid bringing up the shooting during that evening ministry’s time. Why? The parent’s child had been struggling with serious anxiety due to school shootings, which emerged as the child’s greatest fear. The faithful parent worried that a public conversation would trigger hard emotions and the child would regress, losing the hard-fought progress of emotional stability which allowed the child to participate in school.
One of our COS teachers, simultaneously, asked me to prepare some Scripture passages we could share with the kids, last Wednesday. Here they are, in case you’d like to pray them, share them, or hold them close:
Comforting Promises of God’s Hope in Scripture after School Shootings and Other Tragedies
- Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
- Romans 8:38-39 For I am convinced that (nothing) in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Lamentations 3:31-33 God will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.
- Psalm 34:18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
- Psalm 46:1-3 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
- John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
- 1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
- John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
- Exodus 20:13 “You shall not murder.
As if gun violence in schools isn’t heavy enough, who can forget that today is the 23rd anniversary of 9-11. Ughh.
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. On your precious children. On those whose minds are twisted. On all of us called to put our love of neighbor in action.
In Christ’s hope,
P Fritz
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for our children and praise you for the gift of education. We know it’s never your will that bullying, violence or shootings take place in a school or anywhere else. We recognize these things are evil and that you have called us to stand against wickedness through our words, actions and prayers. Guard and guide our students, teachers and staff that they can worry less about danger and delight more in the beauty and thrill of learning about your world each day. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
