Hey Guys!
Just a quick note before you read this. I will now only be posting new material on Mondays instead of Mondays and Thursdays, like I was doing before, I am just too busy with school and everything to post twice a week. Hope you guys like today’s posts and most of the ones that follow. Have an amazing day! 🙂
-Alex Kaine
The other day I found out from my English teacher what the moment of silence was for: a time to pray.
It was Thursday morning and my day had begun with English class, one of my favorite classes. We got in and prepared to take out weekly grammer test. On the test we always have to diagram two sentences, and I was trying to remember how we diagrammed a sentence from last week when the morning announcements came on.
“Good morning students, teachers, and staff, please stand for the pledge to our flag,” the voice on the other side of the intercom said. From there we stated the pledge and went on the our moment of silence, but two or three people whispered to one another through the entire thing, and I saw my teacher give them two or three looks through the minute. I also noticed that my teacher, as she stood by her desk, had her head bowed and her eyes closed. She’s praying? I asked myself. I didn’t know Ms. Fagan, my teacher, was religious in anyway, Christian or not, I just had no clue to what she believed.
When the announcements ended, Ms. Fagan once again gave the talking treo a look of disappointment and irritation. She told them that they were not to talk during the moment of silence. Her facial expressions really told the story though. She was a great teacher, one of my favorites, but her start could turn a man to stone if he looked at her too long. As she talked to the people that had been talking, even I fidgeted in my seat a little bit. You didn’t want to get on Ms. Fagan’s bad side.
After a short talk to the students, she turned to the rest of the class and asked, “So what is the purpose of the moment of silence?” She started to walk around the outside circle of desks, and then moved to walk around the inside circle of desks. Now she was in front of me instead of behind of me. The boy next to me raised his hand to answer the question.
“To remember our lost ones,” he said.
“Ok,” Ms. Fagan said, continuing to walk around the desks. “Anyone else?”
Two or three more people answered the question, but they did not have the answer that my teacher was looking for. That is when she answered the question for us.
I can’t remember her exact words, and I will paraphrase because I do not want to say that she said something that she actually didn’t say.
Ms. Fagan said that it was a time to pray. There used to be a morning prayer in school, she said, but they had taken it out. Now they left exactly a minute for anyone that wished to pray. She asked us what the first amendment freedoms are, which is a bad question for kids that just finished summer break, most of school knowledge had said Good Bye! and took a summer vacation as well, so it took us a little while to finally say that the freedom of religion was one of the freedoms in the first amendment.
Ms. Fagan strongly pointed out that the freedom of religion cannot be taken away from us. Even if they take a morning prayer out of school, the government or school cannot take that freedom away from you, we can believe whatever we want to, she said. Throughout this I noticed that my teacher was speaking very, very strongly about this, she was really putting her opinion out there, which, in my opinion, was good, and this is a public school.
So, no one can take that freedom away from you. You can pray to God all you want. He is your God and He will never leave you. No one can force you not to believe, and you have to stand up for your beliefs. You may be the only chance that a person has to even here about God or Jesus, make sure you speak up, at any and every opportunity. Yes, I know it’s hard, I’ve tried before. I’ve sought advice from others on the matter, and they admit that it is hard for them too. But don’t let persecution ever get in the way of what you believe. Yes, it will come in all different ways and in all different levels of strength, but you have to stand strong. If you stand with Christ, you are going to go through persecution, it’s just a fact. People don’t believe in Jesus and Him saving us from out sins, but we do, and we have to go through persecution to show just how much we believe. Don’t let the thoughts of others weaken your faith. We believe in a God that is real, alive, and breathing. No on can take Him away from us; no one.
LIF 