This has been a violent week. The tragic drama of the Boston Marathon bombing and the gripping manhunt has left us all emotionally exhausted. What can I write that we all have not thought or experienced about this horrific event.
Closer to home, however, we had a shooting at our office complex on Thursday morning. I was at the dentist when I received a call from my wife that our office complex was a crime scene, someone had been shot. Fortunately, my wife and I, who work together at my law office, did not arrive at the office until after the shooting, and were not harmed or in danger. Nevertheless, I left the dentist immediately and went to meet my wife at the office, where we waited while the police secured the crime scene and took the shooter away.
We heard a report that the criminal attorney in another office, two doors down from us, was involved. My first thought was that he had been shot by a criminal client. The criminal lawyer’s father works for him, and had been arrested a few months earlier for pulling a gun on a client, apparently in self-defense, but had not shot the gun. My wife and I were very uncomfortable having the criminal law practice so close and considered moving, but did not. Now with this shooting, we were physically and emotionally shocked.
It turns out that the shooting had nothing to do with the criminal lawyer’s law practice or criminal clients. The lawyer was the criminal. He was 48 years old, married with children, and he was having an affair with his office receptionist who was in her twenties. He was representing her in a paternity action against her ex-boyfriend.
The lawyer came to the office that morning with his .357 handgun to meet the ex-boyfriend. The 25-year-old victim was sitting in his car. The lawyer approached him holding the gun, and ordered him out of the car. The young man grabbed the barrel of the gun and tried to duck out of the way but the lawyer fired a shot, striking him in the back. The victim ran to a nearby medical office and collapsed. He recorded the incident on his cell phone which police recovered at the scene.
After the shooting, the lawyer stood over his victim saying something like, “Do you feel that … that’s you dying boy,” according to court documents. Others in their office who heard a pop, went out to the parking lot, saw him standing there holding the gun, and called 911. The lawyer went back to his office and called police to turn himself in. See news report here.
I first met the lawyer on Tuesday this week in the parking lot where he was arriving with his receptionist. I suspected they were having an affair because I had seen her driving to work in the morning in the lawyer’s Mercedes and opening the office. My suspicions were correct, and his adultery was the source of the emotion and evil intent that led to his attempted murder of the young man.
So, this week has been a week of violence for us along with everyone else in America. Today, April 20, is the 14 year anniversary of another day of violence in America, the Columbine High School massacre. Reading through the One Year Book of Christian History in my morning devotions, today’s entry was about a young teen, Rachel Scott, who attended Columbine High School in 1999. Here is the remarkable April 20 entry from the book:
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God gave us a glimpse of the future.
RACHEL SCOTT was just eight when her father, Pastor Darrell Scott, walked out on her mother Beth, leaving her with five children. A year later Rachel’s grandparents helped her mom move to Littleton, Colorado, and buy a home.
When Rachel was twelve, she had a life-changing spiritual encounter. She later wrote in her Journal, “Everyone was there at the altar, and I felt so drawn to it. You have to understand that I was so young . . . to be drawn that way, it was nothing short of God . . . . That night I accepted Jesus into my heart. I was saved.” From that time on her family saw a spiritual depth beginning to develop in Rachel.
Two years later, Rachel’s mother remarried. During this difficult adjustment Rachel became increasingly withdrawn and private. When she was sixteen, her mother gave her a journal, the first of many. Rachel began to chronicle her spiritual journey and commitment to Christ — a commitment that cost her deeply. She broke up with the boy she loved in order to keep herself chaste and was rejected by five of her closest friends for talking openly about her faith. On April 20. 1998, one year to the day before she died, she wrote these words: ‘I have no more friends at school. But you know what . . . it’s all worth it to me . . . . If I have to sacrifice everything I will.” Rachel had no idea of the sacrifice she would ultimately make.
On April 20, 1999, Rachel sat outside the cafeteria when two troubled students armed with guns came up the stairs at Columbine High School. They opened fire, hitting her three times. After leaving to find more victims, they returned to where Rachel lay in pain. One of them lifted her head by her ponytail and jeered, “Do you believe in God?” She answered, “Yes.” He put the gun her temple and killed her.
About a month after Rachel’s funeral, her father received a phone call from a stranger who told him about a dream he had. As Darrell recalled it, “He dreamed about her eyes and a flow of tears that were watering something that he couldn’t quite see in the dream. He was adamant about the eyes and tears and wanted to know if that meant anything to me . . . . He told me that dream had haunted him for days, and he knew there was a reason for it.”
Her father had no idea what the dream could mean. Several days later he picked up Rachel’s backpack from the sheriff s office. Inside were two journals, one with a bullet hole through it. He turned to the last page of her most recent diary and was dumbfounded to see a drawing of her eyes with a stream of thirteen tears watering a rose. The tears appeared to turn into drops of blood as they touched the rose. The number of tears matched the number of victims at Columbine. It practically took his breath away to see in Rachel’s final diary exactly what the stranger had described to him a week earlier.
Looking in previous diaries, her parents discovered that same rose drawn a tear before Rachel’s death. The earlier drawing simply showed the rose with the bloodlike drops, not her eyes or the clear tears, and it showed the rose growing up out of a columbine plant, the state flower from which Columbine High School got its name.
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It was like “Pop, Pop, Pop.” A Christian couple hid in the bathtub with their dog praying for safety. Click Here for the video interview by NBC anchor Brian Williams with the Watertown, Massachusetts couple who heard the gun fight between the Boston Marathon terrorists and police taking place in their front yard.
After a week like this, the Apostle Paul’s words are a comforting source of rest.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
BETWEEN TWO CITIES 
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