What If?

T.J. Lane. Some of you might know who this 17 year old boy is. He is a broken young man who walked into school in Ohio and snapped. Lane walked into the cafeteria of his alternative school with a .22 pistol that was owned by his grandfather and shot four kids of whom three have died. This breaks my heart for the simple fact that three families have to bury their sons - sons who hadn't even lived for two decades. Sons who might have made a huge difference in the world and who had their whole lives ahead of them.

My heart breaks for the families who have to go through this, and I pray that comfort, love, and strength would be given to these families so graciously by our Lord. I pray that these individuals' faith would multiply exponentially.  However, I also want to focus on Lane. Now what he did was wrong, unruly, and shocking. In no way am I defending him, but what would have happened had the unconditional love of our God, that is shown to us as Christians, been shown to this boy? What if someone went up to this broken young man, who was an outsider at school and abused at home, and genuinely asked him how are you? What if instead of the verbal or non-verbal messages of "Your worthless and you'll never amount anything," he was told that there is a God who created you, loves you, died for you, and knows you, and with Him you can literally do anything! If these questions that were just stated were not just hypothetical, and these actions were actually taken, then there might be three more world changers still alive, and another one was not in prison.

Now before you write this post off as "Well that's sad," or "This is a new perspective, but it doesn't have anything to do with me," quit being selfish, get off your religious pedestal, quit pointing the finger at the students and parents who didn't do these things and listen. How many times have you gone to church and said, "Hey how are you?" and walked past the person before they even had the chance to take a breath to respond. Or what about the times you responded with the nice, churchy, feel-good answer of "Blessed and highly favored, brother." Please men and women of God, I strongly encourage you to love people as much as you love yourself. It's the second greatest commandment in God's word!

As Matthew recorded in his Gospel, Jesus said, "For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me." Lane wasn't shown an adequate amount of love and therefore,  acted out of anger. Now as I said before, it was brash and wrong. However, you as men and women of God have the ability and responsibility to keep this from happening again. So, please love your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength first, and second, love people so that one day there might be a generation of your children and grandchildren who are leaders that are stronger than anyone before them. Not because of the turmoil that they have survived, but because their peers have acted as iron to them and sharpened them! Love you brothers and sisters!