Bullets Fly Close By

Bullets Fly Close By

By Kara Akins

There was a shooting in Emma Wheeler Homes tonight directly across from our afterschool program. The shooting was at 5:46 and our pre-schoolers are let out at 5:30, the rest of the children are let out at 6:00. Well, we were running late, thank goodness, and the pre-schoolers weren’t let out until around 5:55. My niece and daughter drove the pre-schoolers home and happened upon the scene of the shooting. The police were there but hadn’t even put up the yellow tape.  The victim survived… another blessing. The shooter got away.

And I am sad. I am sad that children played alongside the yellow tape right after the shooting as if nothing happened. It’s too normal to them. I am sad that the police didn’t notify us at the school about the shooting and we released children to walk home in the midst of a dangerous situation. I am sad that I didn’t cry. That no one cried at the thought of someone being shot. What is wrong with us?

Wouldn’t it be something if we, the church… the ones who believe people are made in the image of God, would respond to violence with the emotion and attention it deserves? Wouldn’t it be something if we can convey to this generation of youth the value of life by a display of appropriate emotion when life is violated?

After I drove away from the scene, regretting the lack of emotion I modeled before the children, I couldn’t help but envision what it would look like if the church responded to these shootings in mass number. What if we lined the streets of the projects to show sorrow, much like crowds lined Kensington Palace when Princess Diana passed away? What if the youth of the inner city saw people from all over Chattanooga come to cry over the spilt blood on their streets? What if genuine mourning over needless violence was modeled to our youth each time it happened? Would they begin to believe that life is valuable? Would the church begin to believe that if someone who was killed is valuable, then so is the child who still has breath in him or her? Would we all begin to wake up from our numbness? For we have fallen into a slumber. Our love has grown cold and the coldness has ushered us into a deep sleep.

Martin Luther King had a dream and I want to have a dream, too. But I wasn’t allowing myself to dream. I was stuck in rationalizing.  I reasoned I could help maybe ten or twenty children in the inner city to turn their lives around. Maybe. And even that number can change on a given day. Ha! But even if I helped a hundred children to turn their lives around that wouldn’t really be solving Chattanooga’s problems.

There is a verse that caught my attention. I have heard it before but I never needed it as desperately as I feel it is needed now… or I simply wasn’t aware of the need until now.

“If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

I can’t help but to ponder what a land that has been healed looks like. Healing in Emma Wheeler. Healing in Chattanooga. That’s what we need and it is refreshing to remember that God is able to do it. And the formula for healing has a lot to do with the church.

Maybe humbling ourselves is going down to the projects. Maybe it is weeping over those that are slain in our city. Maybe it is allowing the sorrow of what is taking place in our city to drive us to our knees as we cry out to God for mercy.

Maybe (the church) disengaging from our apathy is what turning from our wicked ways looks like. Maybe our apathy and living so much for our own comfort is revolting to God. Mordecai didn’t mince words when he told Esther,

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13&14)

According to Neighborhoodscoutreport.com, Chattanooga is ranked to have the 10^th most violent neighborhood in America. OCHS Center says Chattanooga ranks 11^th in the country for crimes, ahead of Detroit and Atlanta. Ironically, American Bible Society ranked Chattanooga third in the most Bible minded cites in America. Let’s face it, we aren’t being nearly as effective as that Bible statistic implies we are. There is a gap from what we (the church people) are learning and what we (the church people) are sowing. Because it’s not that the children in the inner city won’t go to church or Bible study. They will go. There just aren’t enough people who are willing to take them. Didn’t Jesus Himself say, “the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few”. (Matthew 9:37) When you immerse yourself around the needy then you are able to compute how vast the need really is. That is when you find yourself praying for laborers and staying up until 3:30 in the morning writing a blog post about your longing for people to take action… even though it’s referencing a shooting that logically would keep people away. But I am hoping the opposite.  I am hoping that it will serve as a reminder that we need to draw near.

For I have a dream.

I have a dream that one day Chattanooga will be healed. I have a dream that the church will rise up for the distinct purpose of falling to our knees because we care so deeply over the condition of this place. I have a dream that violence won’t be ignored, but that it will be mourned. And I know that when we allow our hearts to break, God will show Himself near for He is always near the broken hearted (Psalm 34:18). Always.

Kara Akins married Mr. Jack Stephen Akins III at age 18.  She is now the mother of six children, ages 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18.  Her "7th child" is her niece, Cecily, who also lives with the family.  She has one boy in the bunch who is spoiled rotten.  Along with being a mom, she is also a speaker for the Be Still, Get Real team.

We Don't Know What We Think We Know

"We Don't Know What We Think We Know"

By Kate Gifford

The first day my kids and I tried our hands at this tutoring thing with WOW Kids was a hands-down fiasco.  I, with a teaching degree, with a couple of decades experience with kids in various capacities, with a small army of helpers, could not keep ten primary-grade children under control.  There were less than two kids to every helper.  Excellent odds for maintaining control, no?  No!  Those kids ruled the roost.  They shouted me down and danced on the desks. Anything in their hands became a projectile missile.  We dodged and they dashed out of the classroom.  And after they dashed, they screamed a frightening array of choice vocabulary that left my own children goggle-eyed.  My family huddled up and changed tactics, to no avail.  The city kids won that week and the next week.  And the next.  And the one after that.

We started this thing in our own strength but turned to prayer in a nanosecond because truly there was nothing else to be done.  This is a dark place and, but for the Lord, we fight an impossible battle. Five months later, we’re still at it but before we open the doors to thirty or so hyperactive children, the handful of volunteers meet to beg for God’s mercy on the lives of these children, to take our meager abilities and multiply them into something powerful, something beneficial.  I’m always impressed as we gather together, The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  We seem too few to do this job.  How can we do this work?

We are too few to do this job.  But for the Lord!  Little by little, month by month, we inch ahead.  We get to share hope with these kids.  We get to share the love of Jesus.  There is something different about sharing the love of Jesus with a well-fed, loved, self-sufficient friend or relative and sharing the love of Jesus with second graders sprinkled with burn marks because they can’t count on adult help to cook their meals.   There is something powerful about holding the face of a fourth grader, looking into her eyes and telling her she is beautiful, she is valuable, she is important to myself and more importantly to Jesus and then watching her react to these words because where she comes from, hopeless people aren’t equipped to offer a lifeline of hope. We get to share Bible stories and principles that speak to their lives; stories they can relate to in ways that we sheltered middle-class suburbanites simply cannot.  (Cain’s murder of Abel is a favorite.) We get to demonstrate that God is love by loving them, by sharing the imperfect but healthy bonds of love in our family.  We get to show that God is just by stepping in and administering fair discipline (as many times as it takes.)  We are careful about the promises we make and even more careful about keeping our word. By doing so we build credibility and show them that our God is faithful. 

But for all this, God has shown my family more.  When we wrangle a rebellious child back into order in the classroom, God reminds us, You, too, are rebellious and I love you enough to tackle the places where you go astray.  When we hug a child reeking of dirt, smoke and worse, before we wrinkle our noses, He whispers, Your pride is sooo much more offensive than this.  When we are frustrated by the magnitude of the work, the one step forward, three steps back, He says, So it is with you. I love you. You are worth the effort.  It is good to be knee-deep in sin and the literal darkness, mud and desperation of the Projects because that is the perfect picture of every area where we live our lives apart from Christ.

These children are amazing.  They are curious, resilient, and joyful in the face of chaos and uncertainty.  They can be moody, disobedient and out of control, but over time the children are letting down their guard, beginning to trust.  They are started to show us their tears, share bits of their stories, wrap their arms around our waists, nestle in for comfort.   And that makes the many journeys across the tracks to an overlooked part of town well, well worth the effort.

Kate Gifford is a wife, a mom with a houseful of kids and a recipient of God's great grace.  She and her children teach the K-2nd class at WOW Kids Tutoring on Tuesdays.