Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
This past weekend, the people of Grand Blanc were rocked by a horrifying experience of a man driving his truck into an LDS church, getting out, shooting and killing multiple people during a worship service, and setting fire to the building, which was almost entirely engulfed in flames by the early afternoon.
It is hard to overstate how disturbing this event, like any other mass killing of people at a church, school, concert, or any other place is. This one took place about 14 miles from where Rose grew up, in a community we have visited many times and where we liked to go to the movies.
Let us pray for the people of Grand Blanc and of Burton, Michigan. This was a horrifying event.
Let us also reflect on how easily we tolerate the hatred that leads to violence, the willingness we are to accept the easy proliferation of weapons in our communities, our jocularity in condemning whole swaths of people, our resistance to expanding healthcare services in all our communities, our rejection of the common good and the means by which we can build up our communities, and our unfaithfulness in believing there is nothing we can do about it.
At a time when leaders have an easier time blaming an outside threat, or seeking to militarize our police to dominate our citizens — even for the federal government to seek unconstitutional war powers on our own soil, the hardest thing to admit is how we all have failed each other. And how much we all need to repent of this sin we bear together.
With love,
Drew+
