Are we in denial?

Here is an article from a non-mainstream source that is really scary. Do you think our schools are at risk? Or do you think terrorists realize that a Beslan-type attack on American schools could release a fury that would threaten every Muslim in the USA?

Here's an excerpt:

Probably the last place you want to think of terrorists striking is your kids' school. But according to two trainers at an anti-terrorism conference on the East Coast, preparations for attacks on American schools that will bring rivers of blood and staggering body counts are well underway in Islamic terrorist camps.

* The intended attackers have bluntly warned us they're going to do it.
* They're already begun testing school-related targets here.They've given us a catastrophic model to train against, which we've largely ignored and they've learned more deadly tactics from.

"We don't know for sure what they will do. No one knows the future. But by definition, a successful attack is one we are not ready for," declared one of the instructors, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. Our schools fit that description to a "T"-as in Terrorism and Threat.

Click on the title to read the entire article.

This is an interesting web site focused on the effects of violence as well as the need to protect ourselves from violence.

---Katie

More thoughts on Churchwide Assembly

I have to say that my week at the Churchwide Assembly troubled me to some degree in my understanding of how we are to live as Christians. The theme for the Assembly was “Living in God’s Amazing Grace: Thanks Be to God!” The theme and all of our Bible study were from Galatians. Speakers and leaders emphasized over and over how we are no longer bound by the law. One Bible study leader asked, “What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything?” I have to say I struggled with this because I always have seen the Bible as having something to say about how I am to live. Am I to ignore all that the scriptures say about how we are to live because I am free from the law? Am I holding my brothers and sisters to a law to which we are no longer accountable by believing we should refrain from what the Bible defines as sexual sin?

I have been immersing myself in Jesus’ teachings since I have been home, particularly in the book of Matthew. I also have been reading Martin Luther’s “Freedom of a Christian.” Luther writes:

"Now Adam was righteous and created by God without sin, so he had no need to become righteous and justified through work and caretaking. However, so that he not be idle, God put him to work planting paradise, building and conserving it. These were free works, done only to please God alone, and not to attain righteousness, which he already possessed and which would have already been naturally inborn in all of us as well.

It is the same with the work of the believer, who through faith is once again put in paradise and created anew. Such a person does not need work to become righteous but, simply to please God, but is commanded to do such free works so as not to stand around idle but to give the body work to do that sustains it."

So, do we live our lives to please ourselves or to please God? And if we live to please God, how do we know what pleases God? Perhaps we look to the scriptures where we see not only the commands that God gives us, but a loving father who overlooks our mistakes and loves us in spite of our inability to keep the law perfectly. We don’t have to because Jesus already did it, yet we love him by doing what we can to obey him.

Hmmm. I seem to remember Jesus saying something about obeying him if we love him…

---Katie