Lessons in Love ...

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, `God is in my heart,' but rather, `I am in the heart of God.'
- Kahlil Gibran

They have buried five innocent young girls ... Their community will never be the same ... Our world will never be the same ...

Yet the community that loved, and buried Anna Mae Stoltzfus, aged 12, Naomi Rose Ebersole, aged 7, Marian Fisher, aged 13, and sisters Mary Liz and Lena Miller, ages 8 and 7; can teach the world quite alot about love ...

The Mennonite Central Committee announced this week that it was organizing a fund to help defer mounting medical costs for caring for the wounded and the dead, and the reply of the people at Nickel Mines was to ask that a fund be set up for the widow and children of the shooter.

My only thought was - talk about living what you believe. This community is hurting in ways we can not imagine, yet they are walking the Gospel. They are wracked with grief (they are stoic about it - the Amish always are), but they are caring for their neighbour who is hurting too.

Those five little girls died such a senseless and brutal death and as they were buried and other families still hold vigil by bed sides in hospitals in Pennsylvania, the community that brought them into the world and nurtured and loved them for their all too short lives, is reaching out in LOVE to the family of the shooter ...

We in the church, to say nothing of a cold secular world should take note. Jesus and his crew always challenged us to live the Gospel (our faith) by example - today there is perhaps no better, nor stronger example of living the Gospel then the fine people of Nickle Mines who have confronted evil with LOVE.

May God bless them for it ... and may God have mercy on the rest of us ...

Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful, proud, or rude.

Love isn't selfish or quick tempered.

It doesn't keep a record of wrongs that others do.

Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.

Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting.

Love never fails!

(I Corinthians 13:4-7 CEV)