By Pastor Donna Clark Fuller, Rock Port and Watson United Methodist Churches

As we start another school year, the memory of so many mass shootings that have happened in schools over the last several years has to weigh heavy on the minds of teachers and students alike. School should be a safe place for children to learn, but there are too many deeply disturbed people in our world today that can do a lot of damage if they want to do it. As people of faith, we have to ask ourselves, what can we do to make the world safer for our children? While there can be many things to consider, and many ways we can disagree on what to do, one thing we must consider is the spiritual state of the shooters.

Recent shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, made the news with the numbers of people killed. But another incident did not receive so much attention. It was of a shooting that was intended to be carried out in Lubbock, Texas, but the man was apprehended and was not successful in his intent. A man named William Patrick Williams has been arrested for allegedly plotting a mass shooting. The police say that he obtained firearms by making false statements to a firearms dealer.

This potential situation was averted because of the man’s grandmother. He had called her and told her that he planned to shoot up a local hotel and then commit suicide by cop. She notified the police of his plans and they were able to arrest him before he could carry out his plans. We will never know how many lives were saved because of her actions.

His grandmother could have looked the other way. She could have tried to dissuade him, but not called the police. But instead she made the choice that resulted in her grandson’s arrest, but saved the lives of people not related or even known to her.

How deeply separated from the love of God does one have to get to want to commit suicide and end what should be seen as a precious gift from God in giving us life? How much more does one have to be in a very dark place to not only want to end one’s own life but take other, innocent lives as well? How can we keep people from getting to that place? Maybe we need more grandmothers who care, who know the love of God and so are capable of loving others, even unknown others. Maybe we need more grandmothers and grandfathers and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and just plain neighbors who can pass on the love that God has for us all, and shine the light that comes from that love into the dark places that some people can get into. Before the deepest separation can happen. Before the shooting.

“I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” Ephesians 3:14-15