The people I write about in "Our Lives" meet death in a variety of ways.
Most of the time it’s natural causes, and usually at a very old age. Others, sadly, are much younger.
Occasionally, it’s someone who died in an accident, or, much rarer, a violent act, the victim in a robbery gone bad, for example.
But never has it been like it was for Christopher Lane last week in Duncan — because somebody reportedly got bored and decided, just for kicks, to kill someone.
Like many, I'm still struggling with what to make of it.
While my family was in Gulf Shores, Ala., recently, I had the honor of baptizing my oldest daughter, Aubrey.
We did it right there, wading out into the roiling sea off the white sand beach.
For several months leading up, she had been talking about it with her mother, and she had decided the time had come.
As I told Aubrey, this was her chance to “choose God back.” He had chosen her, in a sense, already; knew her before she was ever born, before anyone else did, who she was and who she would become, each red hair and every freckle.
All that remained now was for her, when she was ready, to reciprocate, repeat the choosing — claim Him as her God and Christ as her Saviour.
She said she was ready. So, with my arm around her, hand clasped over her nose and mouth, it was under and back up.
It was one of those moments that parents of faith look forward to. And we never forget them.
Even so, I wish I had other assurances to give her. I can tell her to walk in faith, that her future is now set — and truly, I believe that it is.
But the details — yes, the details, all those endless what-could-happens — between now and eternity, those I cannot guarantee.
It makes me angry, having to send her, and my other daughter, out every day into a world where kids are killing other kids.
Taking lives because they’ve allegedly got nothing better to do.
Because of this constant, insatiable need to be entertained.
And I know that that’s not all that was going on in Duncan; there’s much more to it, something wrong, deeply wrong in the heart of anyone young or old who could do something like this, whatever the motive.
Still, I have to worry about a world where it seems that, more than ever, to be bored — to have no visible means of distraction at hand,
in hand even, a phone, an electronic device, anything that amuses, stimulates — is the worst thing you can ever be.
I hear it from my own girls far too often: “Daddy, I’m bored.”
Even as they are surrounded by said devices.
Understand, I’m not claiming to have any answers here. I’m still processing.
Back to Duncan for a moment, and then I’m done.
I keep hearing the word “senseless” applied to this crime.
I’m not sure that’s good enough.
Whether the alleged killers thought it all through or not, what happened was probably the logical conclusion to a set of premises reflective of how they view themselves and the world.
In other words, if we knew everything, it would probably make perfect sense.
But I’m still processing that too. I’ll get back to you on it.
The fact is, at the end of the day, the only real answer to it all, or so I believe, lies in what happened there with us on that beach in Alabama.
Still, though, I am a parent. Which means I can’t help myself.
Worrying about what kind of world I’m one day going to hand off to my children has become one of my chief preoccupations.
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