Alright, don’t get your back up, or your hopes up. This is not an anti-second amendment screed, nor is it an NRA commercial. It’s simply a story.

First off, remember that I’m a kid from Queens (New York). Not much chance for me to get familiar with guns, although I heard a couple of older kids in the neighborhood would go into the dump behind our house and shoot rats. Maybe they used a 22 rifle or maybe it was just a BB gun. And earlier, during the late 40s, I lived in upstate New York with my grandparents. There’s photographic evidence of my familiarity with firearms

In 1948, back in Queens to start school, just like Ralphie, I wanted a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. Never got one. So basically during my 50s childhood, I had to settle for my Hopalong Cassidy cap-firing six-shooter.

Then, while a member of the Boy Scout Air Explorers during my teens, I had an encounter with live-fire.

“Our meetings consisted of learning a little about airplanes, but our fun came from parades, camping, and shooting. We would shoot at an indoor rifle range in the basement of the Poppenhusen Institute (in College Point, NY). One night, Ed’s (the scoutmaster) youngest son, Joe (who was too young to be in our troop), was shooting with us. There were four or five lanes in the semi-dark basement. Each shooting station was separated by a wooden partition. We shot from a prone position using bolt action 22 caliber rifles. I had just sat up to reload when Joe in the station to my right also sat up to unjam his rifle. He held the rifle across his knees and hit the bolt. The rifle fired. The bullet went right through the partition at about the same location where my head had been just a moment before. I hadn’t had much to do with Joe prior to that night, but from there on I deliberately avoided him.”

Frohlich, Robert. Aimless Life, Awesome God . Kindle Edition. 

I have often asked the question, “Why am I still here?” In fact, the very reason I wrote the above named book was an attempt to answer that question. The simple answer though, is that God had a purpose in creating me, and He had a purpose for everything that happened in my life, regardless of whether I considered those things good or bad. I’m sitting here at my desk in the year 2024 tapping away on my computer to write this blog because my Creator has willed it to be so. I’m testifying to His mercy, grace, and love and I will do so until He calls me home.

Psalms 139:13-16 (NIV)

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.