Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 34

“How can we learn to know ourselves? Never by reflection, but by action. Try to do your duty and you will soon find out what you are. But what is your duty? The demands of each day”— Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Marian Stoltzfus Fisher had no idea what life would demand of her that Monday morning in 2006 when she checked into her little Amish schoolhouse. But when Carl Roberts, a deeply disturbed man, burst into the school and lined the little girls against the blackboard and told them he was going to shoot them all, thirteen-year-old Marian, the oldest, stepped forward and asked him to shoot her first.

Perhaps she thought her sacrifice might sate the gunman’s bloodlust so that he would spare the other girls, or that it might buy her classmates opportunity to run, or incentive to run, or enough time for help to arrive. Regardless, five girls beginning with Marian died that day and five were injured. The killer then killed himself.18

Marian lived the faith transmitted to her from her Amish mothers and fathers. They had taught her the saying of Jesus: “The greatest way to show love for friends is to die for them.”19

The Amish grandfather of one of the murdered girls, on the very day of the murders, said of the gunman: “We must not think evil of this man.”20 The Amish set up a charitable fund for the family of the killer. They attended his funeral, explaining: “The Bible teaches us to forgive those who trespass against us, and to mourn with those who mourn.”

The Amish tore down the desecrated schoolhouse. Six months later they opened New Hope School, where their children are learning to live in hope, love each other, love their enemies, and forgive those who sin against them.