I’ve written a couple articles I plan to share later on for my future daughter. I talk about boys and classes, but a topic that always seems to come around for me is faith. Faith is something that has come to grow on me as I get older, but something that has recently happened that caused me to think a little more on my faith is the Oregon Community College shooting.
I’ve been reading different articles, scrolling through social media and getting people’s opinion on the recent activity. They all talk about different perspectives of the shooting, why it happened, what survivors said happened, so on and so forth. I remember reading something a friend from bible study had sent me and staring at it in complete shock. Someone my age died because of their faith. Others may argue and say the shooter didn’t have empathy for anyone in general, which could be true. But he did ask one question: “Are you a Christian?” I read the story aloud to my best friend. In that moment, I read in awe of how someone can do something so horrific, then my roommate paused and said “Aren’t you proud they stood up?”
Later, I shared an article on Facebook from this girl who wrote about putting herself in their position. She began to question a lot of things, like why this was allowed to happen and why couldn’t it have been stopped, and then she questions whether or not she would’ve stood up. She questioned what she would have done had she been in the moment with a gun pointed at her. Would she have come up with an excuse and tell herself “if I can just make it out alive, I can serve Him better.” “Would I have talked myself out of it?”–that question freaked me out. But John 15:13 tells us, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” These people stood up with a gun pointed at them and they still answered yes. No question about it. That is so admirable and brave. But I read the screenshot that night with tears in my eyes completely blinded at the fact that those people were selfless. Had something like that happened at A&M, I would hope I’d have the strength to stand as they did, because the Lord is truly and faithfully good. This I know, and I guard this deep in my heart.
I fell asleep that night praying for the families who lost their loved ones. I could only imagine my mother, and that broke my heart. But one verse has brought me comfort, Romans 10: 8-9 says, “But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith which we proclaim, because, if you confess with your mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This event not only strengthened my faith; it restored it. For Lucas, Jason, Quinn, Sarena, Treven, Rebecka, Lucero, Kim, and Lawrence, I stand with you and I’m saying “Yes, I am a Christian.”