Yes, I’m “cheating”–posting this on Monday and back-dating it. but I have a hard life, so you will just have to cope. ;-p

Due to the insomnia from hell ™, and specifically the fact that I fell asleep at 6:30 in the morning yesterday, oops, I mean TODAY, I didn’t go to church. Turns out that there was quite a bit of drama, though, as the local police were in a standoff with a young man who apparently refused to come out of the house for almost ten hours . . .

what really struck me, however, was that (I think it’s in the video–which can also be seen at the link above) the boy’s mother indicated that, at least at some point, he was “afraid” to come outside. Seriously . . . if I were a (presumably) African-American 17-year old, I would probably be scared to death of the police, too. And I think that, when I first heard the story, I assumed somehow that the shooter was an older man, and to hear that he was a 17-year-old–a “kid”, really–just made me sad . . .

At Madison Girls tonight, oops, I mean “tomorrow” night (fake GEMS, for those of you who are CRC, and for those who are not, fake-fake church-based girl-scout-type thing), the kids were making a box and filling it with a gift for someone who needs to know the love of Jesus. I don’t always do the crafts along with the girls, but if I had been doing this one, it suddenly occurred to me that I would have liked to have brought a box of cookies around the block to that mom, and to that son who, I am quite sure, has every reason to fear the police, and who must feel more than a little bit hopeless about his future growing up as a black male in Grand Rapids . . .

I’m not sure about those cookies, but I can certainly pray. Those of you who are Jesus followers–will you join me?