Good News

	GOOD NEWS
	This song was written and sang by elementary school children in Florida. I believe it has a meaning for everyone! Please listen to the song. The words are written out below so you can follow along. On June 25th, 1962 the Supreme Court ruled that bible reading and prayer would cease in all public schools. I rolled out of bed and my mama had the morning news show on Diane Sawyer was talking bout the tragedy in Littleton But if the kids could get these guns so easily Its gonna get worse you see, we need a change of policy There's a local paper rolled up in a rubber band With a picture of a little boy with a gun in his hand Don't you think if the teachers could only let us pray Sure bring a better way, we might save a life today Oh tell me, Nobody was assassinated by a kid who had a gun Nobody cried, Nobody got mad and took the life from anyone Nobody died, Nobody fired a shot in anger nobody had to die in vain We sure could use a little Good News today. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all I come home this evening I bet that the news will be the same Somebody made a bomb, some school went up in flames Doesn't anybody understand what we're going through We need someone we can look up to Could that someone be you? Please tell me, Nobody had to be afraid to go to school today Nobody cried And when the classroom doors were opened You could hear the children pray Nobody died, Everybody loves everybody in the good old USA We sure could use a little Good News today. Everybody loves everybody in the good old USA We sure could use a little Good News today.

Tuesday morning, a mother in our state dropped her 6- year old daughter off at her elementary school. Less than three hours later she was called back to the school. Not because her daughter had a stomach ache or a head ache. Not because she scraped her knee at recess. But because her six year old daughter was killed by the hands of a gun shot by a six year old boy. That is, by far, the most disturbing sentence I have ever written or uttered.

I'm not her parent... and as you listen, you may not have kids. But on this one thing I'm sure we'll agree. I'm sitting here with a true sense of loss and a million questions.

I thought that the first grade is supposed to be about learning the alphabet and that first grade is supposed to be about learning that 2 times 2 is four. Isn't it? Aren't classrooms still filled with colorful crayon boxes and tiny desks, thin books with oversized print and big pictures? Don't 6-year old girls and boys still have cooties? Aren't elementary school kids learning how to ride bikes, and dressing Barbies and trying to fit into mom's shoes and her pearl necklace?

So, how is it possible that a child born in 1994 toted a gun into his elementary school and shot and killed a first grade classmate Tuesday? That entire sentence seems like a contradiction to me. Investigation, prosecution, 32-caliber gun, motive. These are all adult words. But it seems now that the world of a child and the world of an adult collide far too often.

Now it's pain that brings these two worlds together. It's the pain of a mother and a father that have lost their child forever. It's the pain of a mother and a father struggling with the realization that their little boy lost his innocence Tuesday. It's the pain of dozens of classmates that witnessed the shooting or 500 classmates that heard the sirens of an ambulance approaching their school's entrance. It's the pain of a parent a thousand miles away from that Michigan classroom that has to sit down with their child tonight and try to explain the unexplainable.

Tonight, if I had a child, I'd look right into his eyes, hug him as tightly as I could and try and convince myself that having a six year old is still about holding hands at the zoo, eating happy meals, and kisses on the forehead at bedtime... but that's just me!!!!

	A PRAYER FOR THE CHILDREN We pray for the Children who sneak popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes. And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never "counted potatoes," who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead, who never go to the circus, who live in an x-rated world. We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money... And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die who can't find any bread to steal, who don't have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser, whose monsters are real. We pray for children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday, who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed who never rinse out the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry. And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren't spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move, but have no being. We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must, who we never give up on and for those who don't get a second chance. For those we smother and... for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it. Anonymous In Memory of... Natalie Brooks, student, age 12 Paige Ann Hering, student, age 12 Stephanie Johnson, student, age 12 Brittany R. Varner, student, age 11 Shannon Wright, teacher, age 32 This is in memory of the children and teacher killed in the shooting on Tuesday, March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas.