I was impressed and humbled by the reaction of the Amish to the recent shooting in their community. When faced with the horror of having their own children shot and murdered before them they responded with forgiveness and love.

from here

Dozens of Amish neighbours turned out yesterday to mourn a quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.

Charles Carl Roberts, 32, was buried in his wife’s family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few kilometres from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.

His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him.

About one-half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish.

“It’s the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness they have toward the family,” said Bruce Porter, a fire department chaplain from Morrison, Colo., who went to Pennsylvania to offer what help he could and attended the burial.

“I broke down and cried seeing it displayed.”

He said Marie Roberts was also touched.

“She was absolutely deeply moved, by just the love shown,” Porter said.

I have also read that they plan on starting a fund for the wife and child of the shooter. I was truly moved by their response to this atrocity. They responded to violence with love, to rage with forgiveness. Truly they turned the other cheek.

I could not help but think how things would have been different had our (supposed “Christian”) nation responded in a similar way to the horrors of 9/11. The Amish may seem strange to many of us, and they have many of the same problems as the rest of us (drugs, abuse, drinking), but when faced with horror they hold firm to the rock of their values. They do not love thy neighbor only when it is convenient, they do not turn the other cheek only when it suits them.

Truly an example for the rest of us.