Amish Angels for Emma

Angels in the Schoolhouse

This wonderful article reports that angels were actively trying to help the little victims of that hideous schoolhouse massacre.

Emma Fisher explained that she survived because she was told to 'get out', and she did. The murderer was preoccupied with window blinds and Emma got away. None of the people in the room had told her to get out.

The Amish newspaper also reports that those visitors, who had been released by the gunman, saw an angel over the schoolhouse when they were leaving.

In many circumstances, ordinary and extraordinary, people report angels helping them.

It is a great comfort to know that the Angels were helping the Amish then, and now.

It is reported that one of youngsters was terrified to go back to school, until she saw the schoolhouse full of angels.

Merry Christmas, and Praised be Jesus.

Michigan RFID Program

The Amish in Michigan are also facing RFID chipping of their animals. In Michigan, the approach of the government is different than the other states who are implementing a chipping program.

This expensive program is required of all small farmers in the upper peninsula of the state, for the reason that there has been herds of deer afflicted with tuberculosis.

Some Amish in those areas have chosen to give up animal farming rather than participate in this program, and have decided to go into produce farming instead.

In the lower peninsula, the Amish are not required to chip their cattle until it arrives at the market. Once there, and prior to slaughter, the farmer must purchase a radio chip to be attached to the animal's ear. This accomodation is available to any cattle farmer in the lower peninsula, who may have a patriotic or religious objection to the chipping program.

In any event, the markets themselves feel this to be a burden they don't really want to take on. A citizen concern is that it will inadvertently create a new influence center with the power to affect state policies relative to farming operations.

A further concern is that the gracious accomodation of the state for farmers who object to this program will change when current personnel move on or retire.

Legislative guarantees with constitutional standards will be important to avoid going down a slippery slope.

Amish Beslan

Its another sign of our times, that even the peaceable Amish communities, single room schoolhouses, can be horribly victimized by a guy with a very old grudge. Separation from society doesn't guarantee safety from the worst of it.

It seems the demons just haven't feasted on enough innocent blood yet.

The Amish community, being so self-sufficient, will fade back out of the larger society. and lick its terrible wounds the best it can. It can't take comfort in the things the rest of society does. Flowers, while nice, are no comfort to people who take no pleasure in luxury. They won't understand the undignified piles of stuffed animals that show up at sites of tragedy-a pathetic substitute for a rejected faith in the God they know LIVES.

Amish funerals will follow; affairs with no wake, no embalming, just a plain and simple church service and burial. They will offer their executed children to the grace and love of God, beg His mercy on the man who slaughtered them, pray for those whose lives are hanging on by a thread, pray for the families victimized this way.

Shock and Awe

Then they'll have to live with this trauma and wonder what else could come their way. They don't have the 'benefit' of having the daily diet of murder and horror the rest of us get. They can't even imagine, in the worst of the worst nightmares, things like this. All of it is 'shock and awe.'

The Evil Question

As always, we ask 'why?' of God, of the world around us, but 'why' is an evil question. 'Why' can never be answered to any satisfaction. The truth is- someone decided to do some serious damage, and do it to people who simply couldn't defend themselves. The Amish don't ask that question. The question heard from their lips is "who is responsible?"

It is an unimaginable horror, especially for those children. Society's children have heard about Columbine and other incidents on television. In some way, they're a little bit prepared. For these Amish children, who never watch television, who are completely innocent to the worst things in the world, it was a nightmare directly from hell. In their worst imaginings, this could never have occurred to them.

Amish Beslan

But even for us, the ones acclimated to the horror and bloodspilling of our age, were horrified by Beslan. We couldn't have imagined such a thing-that planning, which took place over months, came out 'without a hitch' leaving all of us with the shock of realization of how evil things really are becoming in the world. The children who survived Beslan will never get over that experience, and even experts in pediatric medicine have said they've never seen children so terrorized, never seen such effects in children. Those doctors and experts are powerless to really help those little ones in the face of raw evil terror. Experts won't be able to do anything for the Amish children either.

Amish Comfort

The only help for them is each other, and their faith. Their faith, thank God, is a strong one, stong enough for them to genuinely live as 'no part of the world'. The promise of God to people like them is that they won't share the penalty for the sins in the world around them.

I hope, and pray, that the promise comforts them. It scares me.

RFID Chips Forced on Amish Farmers

Here is an interesting article floating around the web. It seems that the Indiana Amish farmers, along with others, are being forced to participate in the State of Indiana's RFID microchip program for their livestock. This is a national program, occurring throughout the United States, but recently it was pressed on the Indiana Amish farmers.

The federal government and the USDA have complained for some time about the difficulties in monitoring and tracking farm animals. This has come to the forefront with the two cases of mad cow disease, originating in Canada. Just one case of mad cow put the American grown beef industry in serious straits, with Japan and other countries banning beef grown in the USA.

These two cases were months apart, which is suspicious by itself, and for the skeptical types, has the whiff of deliberate but controllable infection. There are those, including the Amish, that believe there is a '1984' style plan to chip every human being in America. The Amish are quoted in several places that they believe that these RFID chips are the 'mark of the beast' spoken of in the biblical book of revelation.

Certainly, after the experience with England, and the patients who died from mad cow disease, we can be fairly alarmed and interested in controlling this disease. The question must be, is chipping the Amish farmers' animals, and all livestock in the country, a helpful way to control mad cow or other possible diseases?

Those are a couple of the questions for us. For the Amish, however, the position is different. Since their religious beliefs make it impossible for them to cooperate with the federal government's chipping program, what will happen to them?

It is reported that the Board of Animal Health is authorized to fine non-cooperating farmers $1,000 per day. During a time of economic down turn and low farm prices, this represents a grave financial hardship for these small Amish farmers. If they are also required to pay for the chipping and the monitoring, this will increase their costs without improving farm revenue.

Do you think the Amish should allow their animals to be chipped or should they be forced? Do you think the chips will help to prevent disease? There are a lot of interesting questions about this new topic affecting the Amish community.