Satan and the fears and anxiety he produces…are liars

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
Plato

(courtesy the web)

Fear seems to have been a running thread throughout most of our lives
these past oh so many months.

We have fretted, been filled with dread, fear and anxiety over politics,
over anarchists, over Marxism, over wokeism (yes, I just made that a word),
over Covid and over the darkness that just seems to be enveloping all of us
both figuratively as well as literally.

There is fear felt by parents whose children are sick…
Fear felt by families whose loved ones serve in our military,
Fear felt for our first responders and law enforcement…

The list is lengthy and our fear has been palpable.

Yet Believers know from whence fear comes…it comes from the father of Lies.
And so because of this, we know that fear is indeed a liar.

I bring this all up because my friend Stephanie, whose police officer husband
is still in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound to the head and subsequent
wreck of his patrol car, spoke very candidly today
(yesterday when you read this) regarding her being fearful.

Stephanie has had a roller coaster of fear since she first received
that initial call that Rob had been shot in the line of duty.

The initial fear was losing Rob—would he survive.

So just to recap the tale before I proceed, Sgt. Rob Holloway was
responding to an all call for backup in the wee hours of Monday morning
April 12th.
The car that the Georgia State Patrol, The Carroll County Sheriff’s Dept.
and the Carrollton City Police force were responding to, was traveling in
speeds exceeding 100 mph and the young men in the car were firing on
the officers.
Sgt. Holloway was shot in the head, lost control of his vehicle, and crashed.

He was life flighted to Atlanta’s Grady trauma Hospital, underwent surgery
to remove part of his right frontal lobe while parts of the bullet
remain embedded in his brain.

Rob has made tremendous strides and has since been transferred to Atlanta’s
Shepherd Clinic.

However…

Rob has been running a fever now for several days…a fever that does not
seem to be subsiding despite treatments.
He has been placed on potent antibiotics as meningitis is now suspected.

He has been transferred back to the ICU.

Stephanie, my former colleague, has been dutiful to keep a journal
on CaringBridge. A wonderful platform for those who want to share
the updates of loved ones who are struggling with a battle of health.

From the CaringBridge site:

From the launch of the very first CaringBridge site,
we’ve been working toward a single vision:
a world where no one goes through a health journey alone.
In order to turn this vision into reality,
we’ve made it our mission to build bridges of
care and communication providing love and support
on a health journey.

I think it is cathartic for Stephanie to write and reach out to the folks
in her and Rob’s world.
However, I suspect that world is growing wider with each post.

I also think it is cathartic for those of us who read her posts.
Stephanie is probably not aware that she is currently being a strong
witness for what faith in Jesus Christ is all about.

She is honest with her feelings yet so steadfast in her conviction.
She is humorous as well as insightful.
I have been richly blessed by simply reading her daily posts.

Even when she is fearful, she knows from whence her help, her calm,
her peace, comes…

Here is Stephanie’s latest post:

Hello friends,

Today has been an eventful day at the Shepherd All-Inclusive Resort.
Rob ran a fever all last night.
Neither his medications to reduce the fever nor the cooling blanket
helped the fever decrease.
So, we started the day with a fresh round of bloodwork and another CT scan –
all before breakfast.
They changed medications and after the CT scan,
his fever dropped below 100 for the first time since 1:00 a.m.
Thank you, Lord!

Robbie stayed pretty groggy all day and slept a lot,
but the fever never returned.
This afternoon, his neurologist, his doctor at Shepherd,
and an infectious disease doctor came to visit our room.
Even though it is too soon to tell if bacteria grew in his spinal fluid
from his lumbar puncture yesterday,
his white blood cell count was elevated indicating he may have meningitis
(an infection of the brain or spinal cord).
Because there are still bullet fragments in his brain,
he has been at high risk for infection since his injury.
The good news is that the CT scan and blood work are all still normal.
There were also no brain abscesses found near the bullet or
bone fragments in his brain.
This is great news because meningitis can be treated with antibiotics,
and a brain abscess would require surgery and antibiotics.
Another positive behind all of this is that his medical team
started him on the right antibiotics on Sunday
since they suspected infection over the weekend.
The infectious disease doctor increased his dosage and said
that he would probably be on them for 7-14 days.
He said it usually takes longer to notice a difference and requires
a longer medication duration because the infection is in his
spinal fluid.

But wait, there’s more.
As a precautionary measure,
we have moved back to ICU at Shepherd until the antibiotics start
positively impacting Rob’s symptoms.
Robbie was thrilled to have a “new hotel room,” and really quite
pleased with the move.
He is resting peacefully now, and I probably will be soon, too.
I think moving to ICU is a good thing as well for now.
At Shepherd, the ICU nurse to patient ratio is 1:2,
and his vitals will be monitored continuously all night long.
Also, migraines, fever, and confusion are all symptoms of
this type of infection, and so hopefully these antibiotics will
greatly change all of the issues Robbie has been experiencing
so we can get back to training and visiting people in the garden.

I’ll admit that this morning I was a little afraid,
but the Spirit quickly reminded me that fear is a liar
(2 Timothy 1:7),
and verses about fear kept running through my mind.
I was quickly renewed to what I know to be true –
God has us in the palm of his hands (Isaiah 41:10, 13).
No weapon formed against us will prosper (Isaiah 54:17).
So, I started praying and had peace (Psalm 34:4).
My prayer now that meningitis and all forms of infection
have to leave his body and his entire demeanor, vitals,
and physical state are all so greatly improved in the morning
that we can move back to our normal room tomorrow.
We love you and greatly appreciate all your prayers and support.
Have an amazing night.

Love,
🙂 Steph

Psalm 31:14-15
Philippians 4:6-7

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
2 Timothy 1:7

when change is needed

When we are no longer able to change a situation –
we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor E. Frankl

For the last couple of days my posts have centered on, firstly,
the notion of tradition.
That thought then lead to the notion of change.
And not that I believe tradition needs to change…
quite the contrary.

But then the news hit close to home Monday when a friend’s husband, who happens
to be a police officer and was responding to an all-call for officers in the county
to respond to an immediate need to render aid to the Georgia State Patrol who were
actively involved with a high speed chase and shots being fired.

My friend, her husband the officer and their teenage son’s lives
have now changed forever.

The following link is to an Atlanta news station offering a video of one of
the suspects firing at other officers responding to the call following the shooting
of my friend’s husband.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/video-suspect-seen-firing-multiple-rounds-directly-at-officers

These types of incidents are happening all over our country.
A police officer stops a car for a minor traffic offense and
suddenly the stop escalates into utter violence.

The driver and passengers pull out firearms and decide, rather than deal with
what would have been a routine traffic stop, they opt to shoot and run.

Why is that?

Law enforcement all over our country seem to have bullseyes on their backs.

But again, why is that?

Of course we are hearing the masses cry out that the police are targeting minorities.
That the police are profiling.
That the police are brutal.
And I’d agree that not all officers are good.
But the majority are good.
They are doing a job that is taken seriously.

And we, you and I, are the better for it.

So what would have precipitated all this negative thinking?
What has precipitated all the violence directed toward law enforcement
who are out simply doing their job?
What of this defund the police movement?

While all of this madness was swirling in my head, I happened upon the latest thinking by Newt Gingrich…but what does Newt know…he’s just some old white guy…

Consider these indicators that our civilization is beginning to fall apart.

Several days of looting and rioting in Minnesota have occurred even as a trial of a former policeman is underway proving the rule of law works.

A policeman is killed during a car stop in New Mexico, and our elites ignore the murder. In fact, Mayor Mike Elliott of Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis said in the middle of the rioting: “I don’t believe that officers need to necessarily have weapons, you know, every time they—they’re—they’re making traffic stop or engaged in situations that don’t necessarily call for weapons.”

There is a war on police underway with 264 killed in 2020, a jump of 96 percent over the previous year. In New York City, hostile forces use Molotov cocktails to set police cars on fire. Murder rates are skyrocketing around the country with 2020 the biggest one-year jump in homicides in American history – 36.7 percent.

Faced with aggressive criminal behavior and violence against innocent people – including young children being killed – Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib calls for “no more policing, incarceration and militarization.” Ironically, Rep. Tlaib represents Detroit. According to the City of Detroit’s 2020 Crime Report, there were 327 homicides in 2020, up from 275 the previous year – a 19 percent increase. There were 1,173 non-fatal shootings in 2020. This is up from 767 the previous year, which is a 53 percent increase.

In Seattle, Portland, and Milwaukee, no-go zones similar to those in France have been created which are effectively localized secessions from the United States.

Portland continues to be attacked nightly by anarchists. Despite pious statements by public officials, no effective action is underway to restore law and order.

In San Francisco, the declaration by the communist district attorney that theft under $900 will not be prosecuted has led to so much shoplifting that Walgreens is closing all 10 of its drugstores in the city.

The threat to American civilization goes far beyond violence in the streets.

Woke CEOs who refuse to condemn genocide and police state tyranny in China are quick to attack Georgia – even though President Joe Biden was just plain wrong (perhaps lying) about the state’s new election law. Moving the All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado hurts Black small businesses (there are eight times as many employees of Black-owned businesses in Georgia than in Colorado). Furthermore, Colorado’s current voting laws are stricter than Georgia’s new ones. For the woke, it is virtue signaling – not fact – which matters.

The television establishment systematically lied to defeat President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. CNN’s Charlie Chester recently asserted: “I came to CNN to be a part of that. Look what we did, we [CNN] got Trump out. I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out…I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that.”

Of course, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC would dispute any CNN claim that it alone defeated Trump. The two papers won Pulitzer Prizes for lying about Trump.

Traditional media hostility and dishonesty are overshadowed by the internet giants, who are increasingly acting like Russian oligarchs. They are trying to erase a leader who was supported by more than 75 million Americans with a ruthlessness worthy of Soviet tyranny and the Chinese Communist Party.

Crony capitalism is becoming bolder as big government and big business reinforce each other at the country’s expense.

Overt racism through race-based reparations, school quotas, and anti-white and anti-male curricula are a return to government-fueled discrimination and segregation.

Finally, when the state of California is considering requiring students to chant every day to an Aztec god who was the center of a human sacrifice cult, there are sound reasons to believe American Civilization is in crisis.

If we are going to remain America, we must oppose the forces trying to destroy us.

The Crisis of American Civilization

Sometimes change can be painfully slow

“Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy

(The Holloway Family)

I wanted to offer an update regarding my friend Stephanie’s husband, the Carrollton Police Officer
that was shot during a high speed chase in the wee hours of Monday morning.

Rob was shot in the head by a 22 year old young man.
His 26 year old cousin was driving at speeds upwards of 111 mph.

When pursued by law enforcement, the two boys began firing upon each and every law enforcement
vehicle that attempted to intervene in stopping them.

They hit Sgt Rob Holloway in the head.

Rob is the husband of a longtime colleague of mine from school.

Yesterday, my former principal text me the latest condition regarding Rob after he was life flighted
to Atlanta’s Grady Hospital Trauma Center.

The bullet remained lodged in Rob’s brain and could not be removed–
rather the surgeons had to remove part of the the right lobe of the brain.

Miraculously, by yesterday morning, Rob was talking, albeit through a morphine haze.
He asked for a sweet tea and was able to sallow his meds by mouth.

Rob is moving both hands and feet.

Brain scans are looking very positive.

We all continue to pray for Rob, Stephanie and their only child, Grady, a senior in high school.

But here is my angst in all of this.

Rob has been a police officer since 2008.

He had risen to the rank of sargent.
He was always so good to check my husband’s jewelry business in the wee hours, always
leaving a note that in the middle of the night, all was well.

He was thoughtful to this small business owner and we, in turn, were greatly appreciative.

His wife, when we worked together, was a devoted teacher who has since
moved on to being an active school administrator…
Their only child is a high school senior.

They have lived life by trusting God.

They are what we say in the South, “good people”

And yet, because of his profession as law enforcement, Rob is pigeon holed.
He is placed, by our current culture, into an ambiguous position…
a possible pariah against all mankind…
all because he simply wanted to protect and defend…

Contrary to popular belief, support for our law enforcement is not equivalent
to something racist…
despite what our current presidential administration claims to believe….the majority
of our law enforcement and first responders aim to serve the betterment of their
fellow human beings.

We have got to hold on to that and support our first responders.

Thank you all who have offered prayers of healing and hope…
There is a go fund me page for Rob Holloway set up by the wives of
local Carroll, Co. Georgia law enforcement wives.

One day, maybe, this madness will end.

change is often sudden

“Grief does not change you, Hazel.
It reveals you.”
John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

For the past couple of days I’ve been ruminating of the notion of both change and tradition.

Today, or actually yesterday if you are reading this on Tuesday, the world of change hit me
in both the head and heart.

On Monday morning I had gotten a push notification from one of the Atlanta news channels.
There had been an early morning chase between a speeding car going 111 mph on I-20,
just outside of Carroll County…our former county home.
The Georgia State Patrol responded.

It was in the wee hours, around 3 AM—the car first complied by stopping for the State Patrolman,
but as soon as the officer exited his patrol car, the suspects suddenly opted to speed off.
Upon fleeing, the occupants of the car began firing from the car at the State Trooper.
The chase moved from the interstate into Carroll county proper…again, our former county.
Both local sheriffs and local police all responded.

The car fired upon a Carrollton Police Officer’s vehicle and two Carroll County
patrol cars.
Three law enforcement officers were shot.
The Carrollton Police Sergeant who responded to the call was shot and in turn
lost control of his vehicle, crashing into a power pole.
The suspects kept firing on each responding law enforcement vehicle.

Eventually, one of the suspects was killed while the other, a 22 year old male,
was apprehended and taken into custody.

I was doing my regular Monday morning grocery run when I got a text from a friend
back home.
She asked if I’d seen the news…the news about the chase and the three officers shot.

It turns out that the Carrollton sergeant who was shot, and in turn crashed,
is the husband to one of our friends and colleagues from school.

Suddenly the news becomes personal…
Time stops in the grocery store.

Lives change.
Poor and bad choices turn into a series of vicious cause and effects for
a myriad of people.

Sergeant Holloway, the Carrollton policeman, underwent surgery on Monday
but it was not as successful as hoped for…or rather it was just simply as successful
as it could be.
The next 72 hours will be the most critical for Rob’s recovery.

I ask that you will join me in prayers for these officers, their families as well
as prayers for the boys who opted to make devastating choices.

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan,
who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Revelation 12:9

oh how the times are a changin’

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Bob Dylan

(the Mayor’s new ride)

Sadly the Mayor has come and gone…having returned to her official office in Atlanta.
In her wake, this satellite Woobooville office is now in a bit of disarray.

There is washing, cleaning, boiling of bottles and rearranging of a few moved rugs…
chores that this aide must attend to which help to ease the bittersweet sting
that comes with the here then there, the ins and outs of grandchildren coming and going.

Like any grandparent, I obviously love my grandchild.
I see so much wonderment and joy in her existence.

And like her parents…the sun rises and sets in this little girl.

So it only makes sense that we as her family look out and around this oddly
changing world of ours a bit warily.
Troubled by what we see and what we hear.

We wish to hold her just a bit tighter.
Holding her in the protection of our arms within a presumed assumption of safety
in this little corner of this world of ours.

As Bob Dylan sang in 1963…the times, they are a changing…

And the changing is not to my liking.

Friday evening I was watching the news.

There was a story complete with video—
because don’t we seem to video everything these days,
don’t we feel we must record every moment rather than simply living it????…
anywhoo, I digress—
…there was a recorded clash between two very different minded individuals…
and the clash was not pretty.

There was a lady standing on a busy street corner in Portland, Oregon who happened to be
wearing an NYPD ballcap.
Some punk, and yes the word punk is most appropriate, came up behind the woman and
began harassing her….all because of the ballcap.

He had a foul angry tirade directed at this woman for her obvious support of law enforcement.

Antifa came to mind and Antifa he was…

He cursed, berated and belittled this woman…He was crude, crass and vile…
all because she seemed linked to the police–a group he obviously held vehement disdain for…

She turned to the punk and told him that the hat was because her husband had been killed in 9/11.
Rather than backing down or even expressing a bit of remorse, his response grew even viler,
cruder and laced with a deep seething hatred.

I immediately felt my own blood pressure shoot up as I wanted to jerk this dude up by
the scruff of his neck and read him my own form of the riot act.

I call it having a ‘Peter moment’…

I really like both Peter and Paul—
I feel very much akin to their often expressed sense of unworthiness due to their faults and sins…
I know all about faults and sins…
all about not living up and yet thankfully all about redemption.

Yet I probably identify more with Peter than I do Paul.
Peter is more of an emotional hot head.
He often lead by the heat of the moment and of his heart whereas Paul was more
calculating in his actions…
he was full of thought and recourse.
A cause and effect sort of leader.

It was Peter during the height of confusion and conflict, on the night in the garden
during the arrest of Jesus, who draws his knife in a fit of rage and proceeds to cut off
the ear of one of the soldiers
He’s reacting as I would…defensive, protecting, frightened and angry.

Jesus screams out to Peter to stop.

Jesus rebukes him and then proceeds to heal the soldier’s ear…
Now why at that moment the soldiers didn’t all drop their swords and run away,
I don’t know… but that wasn’t to be the ending of the story now was it…

But the gist here is that Jesus rebuked that knee-jerk reaction of Peter’s.
Just as he would have rebuked me when I turned and dotted this jackass’s eye…an expression
my students would often say…”I’m going to dot that eye of yours…”

But the woman maintained her cool, for the most part, and only appears to curse the fellow at the
end before the light changes and they both, I assume, go on to cross the street.

That clash, that confrontation bothered me to no end.

First…who whips out a phone to videotape that kind of crap?
Who has a bunch of cronies standing behind them, snickering and laughing
when one of the members tells a widow that he hopes her husband rots in the grave…
all because he’s a cop.

I don’t understand Nancy Pelosi saying that anyone who disagrees with her party’s agenda
will simply be “collateral damage” and that they just don’t matter.

I disagree so therefore I’m collateral damage and I don’t matter.

I don’t understand Eric Holder telling his minions to ‘hit republicans
low and hit um hard’ —because his minions are taking that literally.

I don’t understand Rep Maxine Waters telling crowds to attack any and every republican
that they see out and about…make their lives miserable she extols the crowds.

I don’t understand what is happening.

I don’t understand the loss of civility.

There is a WWI cross memorial in Maryland that has been on public display since the end of the war
erected in 1925 to remember those Maryland boys who had lost their lives in “The Great War”, the war
that was to end all wars…

Its case is coming up for review at the Supreme Court as there is a suit that has been brought forth
attempting to have the cross removed because it now sits on Government property.
Never mind that the cross is a memorial to war dead.

And so now the hairs of the sites are set on Arlington.
What of all those crosses on graves in Arlington?

I think of all those crosses, and stars, in Normandy.
Foreign soil yes, but an Amercian governed Cemetery.

We have forgotten who we are.

From punks on street corners to leaders in office to people who view
memorials…we have lost our humanness… we have lost our sense of sensibility.

Some days I’m left shaking my head.
Some days I just want to keep my head under the covers.
Some days I simply hang my head
But every day, I need to lower my head to pray…
Lord have mercy on our souls…..

**Tomorrow I will have a story about what should and does matter—
It goes far beyond this idiocy we’ve allowed to consume us–
It’s a story that actually has something to do with a kid who loves his
college and his football and whose life is tragically very limited…

http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/10/20/911-widow-harassed-leftist-protester-portland-tucker-carlson-ann-coulter-react

Defense or offense

Every good citizen makes his country’s honor his own,
and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred.
He is willing to risk his life in its defense and is conscious
that he gains protection while he gives it.
Andrew Jackson

If I were a high school coach, I would put my best players on offense.
The best athletes on my team, I would give them the ball and score points.
I wouldn’t play them on defense.
I would play them where they can get the ball and score points.
Nick Saban

( Law enforcement canvases London’s streets / photo courtesy 570 News, OT, Canada )

Which do you want to play…
Defense
or
Offense?

Nick Saban is a coach who knows a thing or two about playing offense and defense.
He knows football.
And he seems to think offense is the way to go.
Because Coach Saban knows offense scores the points and wins the games.
And isn’t that the goal…
to win the game?

When a team’s defense spends the majority of the game on the field,
it usually means they’re not winning.
The game is probably now lopsided and the defense is spending entirely way too
much time working to keep the opposition from running up the score.

Player’s hands are seen resting on hips as they are bent over in the huddle winded.
Arm tackles take over the more successful full body tackle because players are tired.
Mistakes become blatantly apparent as play becomes sloppy in the fog of fatigue.
And if the truth be told, the players just want the clock to run out so they can
blessedly just finally get off the field and end the bleeding.

Offense is goal oriented not goal stopping.
Offense is sitting in the driver’s seat while working to capitalize on scoring
and winning.
As that’s the key to any game…winning.

But it seems to me that Western Civilization has been playing defense.

The above image of masked law enforcement canvasing streets should not be the face of
what has become the new normal….
Not the cost that politicians flippantly brush off as to living in larger cities.
Fear of crowds, fear at sporting venues, fear at concerts, fear at historical landmarks,
fear of dining in popular neighborhoods, fear of flying, fear of riding on trains,
fear of walking across a bridge…

Defense can only do so much.
And obviously our defense is not working…

Then David said to Solomon his son,
“Be strong and of good courage, and do it.
Fear not, be not dismayed; for the Lord God, even my God, is with you.
He will not fail you or forsake you, until all the work for the service
of the house of the Lord is finished.
1 Chronicles 28:20

the simple difference

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
Winston Churchill

“Perhaps it takes a purer faith to praise God for unrealized blessings than for those we once enjoyed or those we enjoy now.”
― A.W. Tozer

( a leaf dances along the wind, Cades Cove, TN /The Great Smokey Mountains National Park / Julie Cook / 2015)

Today was busy…
It was a day of cooking, preparing and sharing.
It was a day for an early Thanksgiving celebration… for one part of my husband’s family.
It was a day of reconciliations of sorts.
A day for some healing…between an elderly in-firmed father and two of his three grown children…of whom he had estranged himself from years ago.

Lives have been lived…as grandchildren have grown, as now great-grandchildren have grown as well…as time has, all too casually, been allowed to pass…
when it never should have been allowed pass,
for such a very long time in the first place…

The two now grown children had suffered grievously as children under the destructive blanket of abusive alcoholism–only to have suffered again years later as adults..
Odd how that cycle of hurt and pain seems to simply ebb and flow over the odd passage of time…

A small bridge was crossed today…and that was good.
One can never give back nor take back the words, the abuse, the pain, the embarrassment, the resentment and the grievous loss of place, time and years…and yet one can’t help but see the positive effort now taken in the writing of one small wrong in a sea of many wrongs—as it is the uplifting conscious admission of this one said wrong which is what now really seems to matter most.

And as I feel that a small bridge was indeed crossed today, it obviously will never erase or take away that which was…yet it does however bring a bit of peace to two sorrowfully long grieved hearts…

And as I silently stood back watching these tiny hopeful events unfolding during the course of this very cold yet sunny Sunday, resting gratefully in the idea and concept of thankfulness…my mind has not been far removed from the heavy thoughts of Paris and now of the black cloud which hangs heavy and low over Belgium…

I found myself pondering over the “us verses them” divide…that great crevasse which separates the sane and insane within the whole craziness of ISIS Islamic extremism and that of the rest of us…

…As I have labored racking my brain as to what it is that makes a person, or in this case an army of people, to be filled with such seething disregard for the gift of life and living…I have merely been left mystified and stymied–scratching my head in a totally overwhelming disbelief.

The recent pictures of that young woman flashing a familiar hiphop / rap hand sign, garbed in the hijab, who would later don a suicide vest, detonating herself in hopes of taking out as many law enforcement and civilians as possible, goes beyond the average human being’s comprehension.

What sets us apart from these mostly youthful members of an army of hate and destruction…?

Oh we hear the familiar bleeding excuses of disenfranchisement, of socioeconomic disadvantagement, the lack of schooling, the barriers of culture, language, religion, the inability to assimilate to a new country….etc, etc, etc…
…none of that holds water nor is a true paving stone filling the gulf between right and wrong, hate and love, murder and life….

And then it dawned on me—
As simple and perhaps even childlike that it may sound, the divide rests not in the amble abundance of vehement hate, as there is certainly plenty of that found in both words and deed, but rather the difference, the separation, is found in the lack of the simple ability to find and produce a true sense of heartfelt thankfulness.

It all boils down to the simple matter of hating verses gratitude and thankfulness.
–or rather the ability to offer genuine gratitude and thankfulness.

True genuine thankfulness…not the insane thankfulness to Allah that they all died, or all were blown up…but rather the genuine ability to feel real thankfulness which is found in the simplest of places and gestures.

Thankfulness and gratitude not for the materialism of life…not for the gathering of things, the loftiness of status of position, the greedy accumulation of wealth and prestige…but rather thankfulness for the simple and genuine gratitude of the heart…for the most simplest of pleasures—the pleasure of a smile, the thankfulness found in reunions, the gratitude for the bridging of gaps, the thankfulness for waking each day, the marveling in watching a leaf dance across the wind, the delight felt in a single touch, the joy felt in being alive on a cold but sunny November day…

And whereas all of the experts and the powers that be who continue sifting through and within the dust of the whys and hows…it really comes down to something as small and as tiny and as simple and seemingly insignificant as thankfulness and the ability to offer a true heartfelt “thank you” — which is the actual barrier, the true great divide between the us and the them…

Gratitude and thankfulness to, for and in something greater than ourselves…
to Something that revels in life not death, love not hate, freedom not imprisonment…
The gratitude in knowing that there is indeed a Creator who gives and a Savior who waits for us all in the midst of this ever growing turmoil…..

The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart exults, And with my song I shall thank Him.
Psalm 28:7