Just collecting some excellent thoughts and reflections on the recent tragedy.
Rod Drehrer (HT to Glenn Lucke):
I don’t know about you, but that kind of faith is beyond comprehension. I’m the kind of guy who will curse under my breath at the jerk who cuts me off in traffic on the way home from church. And look at those humble farmers, putting Christians like me to shame.
It is not that the Amish are Anabaptist hobbits, living a pure pastoral life uncorrupted by the evils of modernity. So much of the coverage of the massacre has dwelled on the “innocence lost” aspect, but I doubt that the Amish would agree. They have their own sins and tragedies. Nobody who lives in a small town can live under the illusion that it is a haven from evil. To paraphrase gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil does not run along the boundaries of Lancaster County, but through every human heart.
In fact, if we really knew the heart of Jesus, we would know that he himself died a little once again last Monday when those girls were killed. It was Jesus who said “inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me”. It was Jesus who confronted Saul on Damascus Road, Jesus who was dwelling securely in heaven, and asked Saul “Why are you persecuting me?” There is a deep, spiritual connection between Jesus and his people, like a head attached to a body, such that what happens to us, in some mysterious way, happens to him, though he be in heaven. I do not understand it, but I know this is true for he said so.
So I stand with the Amish and I stand with Jesus. Not all the armies who ever marched have had the power or effect on history of that one single and solitary life, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, on all of humankind going on now for over 2,000 years.
This world is run by a God who died for me on the cross and shouted out with his dying breath about those who were tormenting and killing him “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” If we could only see with Jesus’ eyes, we would know that suffering love and forgiveness is what saves and heals the world. The Amish know that.
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