” A Day of Horror and Hope”–by Fran Bogle
Marathon Monday…Two bombs, 3 dead, over 175 injured and a couple of hundred thousand more people wounded in ways that will only emerge in the days and weeks and months to come…It was a day of horror and hope.
Assuming I wasn’t on the ground with a leg blown off or a nail in my knee, I wonder what I would have done that afternoon. Would I have jumped the fence to help apply the
tourniquets, provide CPR or would I have just left quickly hoping that I wouldn’t either get caught in the next blast or get in the First Responder’s way? I will never know and I hope I will never have to find out.
As the week went on I found myself in prayer, for people who were injured, with people who were in shock, beside care givers and with my friends as we struggled to make sense of that which is essentially not understandable. We all wanted answers and ways to respond if this ever happens again. What does it mean to be a person of faith in a time like this?
Perhaps the most faithful way I can respond is to keep loving my neighbors, loving the strangers I will never meet, and praying for my enemies. That’s what Jesus asks us to do, and as hard as it is, I’m going to keep trying to do it.
When the younger brother was arrested on Friday night, I was glad that he wasn’t killed and I prayed for him. I wasn’t glad so that our government could question him, I was glad because I didn’t want another life ended.
It is time for the killing to stop…in Boston and Damascus, in Baghdad and Newtown, in Aleppo and Beruit. It is time to end the drone strikes that make every tax payer complicit in the murder of women and children. It is time find new ways to end terrorism without becoming like the terrorists…It is time to be peacemakers, even it it means living with the fear of crucifixion. Let me know what you think.