Subject: Dying for Someone Else
Date: For the Week of April 6, 1998
If you can bear to do so one more time, revisit Jonesboro, Arkansas,
on
March 24, 1998. Go to Westside Middle School. Let your mind be there in the
early morning. Children are laughing, making excuses about homework, eating
lunch. But you are there before the fire alarm is pulled and children walk
outside into a hail of bullets.
There is a 32-year-old English teacher doing the one job above all
others
she had aspired to in life. Shannon Wright had attended Westside, earned a
college degree, and dreamed of teaching in the school she had once
attended.
And there she is Tuesday morning with her pupils. Explaining nouns and
verbs.
Correcting grammar. Trying to teach 11-, 12-, and 13-year-old students to
use
language correctly.
After a full morning, she enjoyed her lunch break. It was a time to be
still, to relax, to refocus for her afternoon classes. She had just
finished
lunch and moved her students back to the classroom when the fire alarm
sounded. She knew what to do. The school periodically rehearses. In fact,
she
probably told herself there was nothing to worry about. It's just another
of
those required drills. They get us ready -- just in case there should ever
be
a real emergency at Westside Middle.
But that Tuesday turned out to be that dreaded real emergency. No
sooner
had Mrs. Wright gotten outside than the pop-pop-popping sounds started.
Firecrackers? No, bullets! And to her horror she saw children being hit.
They
were screaming, falling to the ground, bleeding! Then she saw a 13-year-old
girl directly in the line of fire. So she did what her relatives and co-
workers said they would have expected of her. She selflessly put her own
body
between the little girl and the deadly missiles. She was hit by two
bullets.
She died from her wounds.
"She loved kids," said her husband, Mitchell. "I'm sure that if she
thought someone was trying to hurt one of her kids, she would try to
protect
them."
This is the week that includes Good Friday and sets the stage for
Easter
Sunday. It is the week for remembering when God, knowing that someone was
trying to hurt his children, threw himself in harm's way for their sake. He
took the deadly blow that was headed for your heart, so you could be
spared.
I have prayed for Mitchell Wright. I have also prayed for little two-
year-old Zane Wright, Mitchell and Shannon's son. I will never understand
how
two children could kill four of their classmates and one of their teachers.
But I hope never to forget the glimpse that Shannon Wright's death has
given
us of what Jesus did at Calvary.