It has happened again, right here in Tarrant County, Texas, a place called by some the buckle of the Bible belt; home of one of the largest and most conservative theological seminaries in the world as well as other religious institutions that would rank as very conservative in comparison to most.\u00a0 Last weekend, a lone gunman entered a place of worship and did his physical and mental damage.\u00a0 This time it was Congregation Beth Israel.\u00a0 Two years ago it was the West Freeway Church of Christ.\u00a0 In 1999 it was my own church, Wedgwood Baptist.\u00a0 Fortunately and prayerfully, no lives were taken with this latest situation.\u00a0 Add to these places of worship, shootings and hostage situations at schools and places of business \u2013 all in Tarrant County \u2013 and one begins to wonder how safe we are, here on the buckle of the Bible belt, in conservative and religious Tarrant County.\u00a0 In my book on the Wednesday night Wedgwood shooting, \u201cNight of Tragedy Dawning of Light,\u201d I entitled a chapter, \u201cDon\u2019t Wait until Thursday.\u201d Based on comments made by those present of what they wished they had done or said prior to the shooting, I implored readers to not wait until the next day, until it was too late, to act or speak what needed to be shared.\u00a0 To the West Freeway Sunday shooting, I would say, don\u2019t wait until Monday, and for the Saturday Beth Israel hostage situation, I would say, don\u2019t wait until Sunday.\u00a0 In the uncertainty of a place like Tarrant County, Texas, I would say to all, don\u2019t wait until tomorrow.\u00a0 Let us join across religious, denominational, political and social lines and pray with the Psalmist, that we \u201cmay walk before God\u00a0in the\u00a0light of the living\u201d (Psalm 56:13).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has happened again, right here in Tarrant County, Texas, a place called by some the buckle of the Bible belt; home of one of the largest and most conservative theological seminaries in the world as well as other religious institutions that would rank as very conservative in comparison to most.\u00a0 Last weekend, a lone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3064,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/3064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}