School for almost all New Jersey and Northeast towns will be in full swing by the end of the week. A day once of anticipation of new teachers, new friends, and new learning has also become a day of fearful anticipation. What school this year will face a person with a gun, usually an automatic or semiautomatic, to create death?
Congress finally got off its seat and passed a gun violence bill but it has little or no teeth. There’s no assault weapons ban. Who on earth needs an assault weapon? And the so-called red flag laws – will they really work? The legislation only “encourages” states to pass them, and can you imagine that Texas Republicans, home to Uvalde, oppose such laws?
I worry for my friends who are teachers. I hold my breath and hope nothing will happen to them or their students. And, in the meantime, so-called gun rights advocates keep pushing the limits of who can have a gun. In the words of the old song, “When will they ever learn?”
Prayer for the Day
In the words of the Psalmist, “To you, O Lord, I call;
Do not refuse to hear me,” we cry as our children return to school;
“Hear the voice of my supplication,” we beg for better laws,
To protect our children from gun violence.
May we beat our weapons into plowshares, as the prophet said,
So that there will be no more murder in our schools and streets.
In the name of the One who calls us to peace,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
When a country with less than five percent of the world's population has nearly half of the world's privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world's mass shootings, it's time to stop saying guns make us safer.
- DeShanne Stokes, sociologist
Open the casket of my son, The blast of a gun blew his head off He was healthy, alive, and young/Show this tragedy to the world I don't want his death to be in vain./Write laws that protect people, not AR-15s.”
- Mary Lanza, poet, from Losing the Boomer Blues
Repay them according to their work, and according to the evil of their deeds;
Repay them according to the work of their hands; render them their due reward.
Because they do not regard the works of the Lord, or the work of God’s hands
Psalm 28: 4-5