One Light Still Shines

Thoughts about building my house on a rock resurfaced while I read the story of the Amish school house shooting from Charlie Robert's widow's perspective in the novel, One Light Still Shines.

Years now after the shooting, Marie Roberts Monville writes about her experience, beginning with her husband's suicidal call that shattered her beloved community and her life. Never having heard or even thought much about her part of the story, my heart has been greatly touched too see how God's love pierced the darkness in the midst of such evil. Mother of three young children, she writes, "At that moment everything I knew about my life changed . . . and I was faced with a choice - a crisis of belief." For Marie this crucial moment defined whether she would trust what she had always believed in to be true or succumb to the disaster threatening her own will to live.

It was in her decision to take her most terrible moment to "walk on water," trusting that God would meet her in the midst of this storm, that my eyes beheld the kind of foundation her house was built on. In this pivotal moment, even before knowing all of the details, Marie called out to God in the way she always had before, and she received a supernatural boldness she had never known. I cannot imagine the result of her life, had her relationship with God not been one in which He was the first One on the scene in any situation.

She writes, "I had no idea what was unfolding with Charlie, but in a moment of sacred stillness as the world raged around me, I vowed this would not be the day that my children looked back on in the belief that it had destroyed their lives . . . God filled me with an absolute assurance that we were going to be victorious."

The story of Marie Roberts Monville is one that does not take away the darkness of evil but one in which God shines a beacon of light into the darkness, giving hope and a future for any situation. God's whispers of His presence challenge us to look for what He will do. They are whispers I do not want to tune out as I come to grips with the fact that expectancy is a sign of faith, one that pleases our heavenly Father who loves to give good gifts.

The gifts of grace and forgiveness that this story encompass are far beyond what most of us could ever imagine. A true testimony of God's redemptive work in our sin-stained world and one of the best love stories I have read. Read it with a box of tissues beside you.