My Thoughts and Prayers for the Amish

In the past I lived in an area of Southeastern Ohio that had a small but vibrant Amish community. Every day as I drove to work, I would often pass the children walking in single file along the road with their lunch pails as they smiled and waved at me. I would see into the fields and see the men struggling to get the plowing done with that one old horse, while across the road seeing the large farm equipment plow similar size fields in a day. No matter how hard they were working, they would still look up and wave as I passed. On weekends I would stop at their stand and buy bread and pies and sometimes other special items they had that week.

I admired these people. Their strength of conviction to have beliefs and to truly live them like no other religious group I knew. Also unlike most other groups they neither pressured me or anyone to convert to their beliefs nor were they judgmental about how I lived my life. They ask for only one thing from us the “English” as many Amish refer to us, and that is to leave them alone to live and worship how they choose.

For this man in Pennsylvania to commit the crime in an Amish schoolhouse makes an already sick crime even more unimaginable to me. It brings to me a thought from an old Law and Order episode of years past, that line being: “I am glad there is a God, because we don’t have a punishment harsh enough in this world.”

On earth all I can do is pray for the Amish in Pennsylvania and hope the media for once, respects their way of life and leave them alone in their grief.