Quick testimony

I hate writing book reports when you've only read half the book. The trouble is I LIKE all these books, I just don't have time to finish them. Doggonit. Anyway. I came across this cool story in my Political Science class and felt the need to share. I finished 1 book report. 3 to go tonight. *sigh* But I have successfully found warm meals for my family for tomorrow night and the morning after, and comfortable beds for all of them to sleep in. Now I just need to find a way to get to the funeral after I finish my horrible math final. AAAGH! Prayer please. I'm not going to sleep much this night.
Anyway here ya go. Hope you enjoy.

It was a Saturday evening in Belfast, September 25, 1982. As twenty-year-old Karen McKeown drove her mother, Pearl, home from a special service at their Protestant church, she was still humming the song the choir had sung: "I will enter into His courts with Praise."
mother and daughter talked about Karen's classes at Queen's University, Pearl's early shift the next morning at the hospital, the contact lens Karen had lost.
Pearl watched Karen, thinking her daughter had never looked prettier. Her dark hair was glossy and thick with a determined curl that karen spent much of her energy trying to tame. Her new white sweater and skirt set off her dark eyes and pale complexion beautifully. She has so much ahead of her, Pearl thought proudly.
Karen dropped off her mother at home, waved good-bye, and headed back to the church to help clean up for Sunday services. She pulled into the church parking lot, got out, and was locking the car when a young man appeared by her side.
"I want you to know that I'm going to shoot you," he said, placing a heavy pistol against the base of Karen's neck.
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet ripped into Karen's neck and tore through her spinal column. She collapsed onto the concrete, bleeding and paralyzed, unable to breathe. Her assailant ran away into the night.
Friends in the church ehard the crack of the gun and called the ambulance, which took Karen to the Royal Victoria Hospital. By the time Pearl and John McKeown arrived, their daughter was fighting for her life in intensive care.
Pearl refused to believe that Karen was the latest victim in Belfast's endless violence. Only as she sat day after day by her daughter's bedside, did the full implication dawn.
Karen could still communicate, and Pearl would lean close to her face as she mouthed her words. It was through those words that Pearl learned the answers to the bloody bitterness of Northern Ireland.
One afternoon when she arrived to visit, she found Karen propped up on several crisp white hospital pillows with tubes coming out of ehr throat, nose, and arms. Machines, screens, and dials monitored her every breath.
Karen's eyes brightened when she saw her mother. "Mum," she mouthed, "Could you squeeze my hands?"
Pearl gripped the slender fingers.
Karen's eyes fell. "I can't feel anything," she said. After a pause she continued,"But it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that we trust the Lord and never give the Devil a victory."
The inverted glass container of an intravenous tube was dripping a solution into Karen's veins, and the drug made her sleepy. Her eyelids batted a few times; then she drifted into sleep.
Pearl sat down in the armchair next to the bed, bowed her head, and wept. A few minutes later she looked up and discovered Karen awake again.
"Mum," she whispered, "you think you have troubles. But just think about the troubles his mum has.
When he said he was going to shoot me, I thought he was one of the boys from church, and i laughed," Karen continued. "It was as if the Lord put His arms around me. When I hit the ground I was still laughing."
Late that evening at home Pearl went into Karen's cluttered room and picked up her thick leather Bible. It had been a Christmas gift a year and a half earlier and was already worn, its pages marked with Karen's notes and underlinings. Pearl looked at the inside cover page where Karen had witten, "To be a brave disciple is to be a bond slave to Jesus Christ, and to find that His service is perfect freedom."
In teh book of Job she found more notes. "this is not an explanation but an inspiration. Job's soul was a battleground without his knowledge. Could this be the reason for suffering today? In all cases, God is supreme and just. The Devil functions within God's purpose." Karen's underlining clotted the chapters of Job. "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him.... You will lie down, and no one will make you afraid."
pearls eyes filled with tears. Here in her daughter's strong, square script were notes that clearly prefigured what had happened. If this is how Karen views suffering, Pearl thought, then this is how I must see what has happened to her.
Meanwhile, the forensic results came back from the crime lab; the bullet taken from karen's neck was from the same gun used to assassinate a prominent attorney. The gun could be traced to the INLA, the Irish National Liberation Army, a Catholic terrorist organization.
The next day Pearl went home, tired and frustrated, to pick up the mail before returning to Karen's bedside. A thin white envelope fell out of the stack of get-well cards and letters. The handwriting was unfamiliar. Her eyes went to the return address: Her Majesty's Prison, Magilligan.
She slit the envelope and unfolded the sheet inside. The writer explained that he had heard about Karen's attack through a Bible stud in his prison. He was, he said, an ex-INLA prisoner who had become a Christian. he was no longer a member of the organization responsible for Karen's attack, but he wanted to ask Mrs. McKeown's forgiveness and permission to pray for Karen. Would she mind?
Pearl stared at the letter in her hand. The signature read "Liam McCloskey." she thought about ehr daughter's peaceful face, about the underlined verses in her Bible, and about her forgiving spirit and absolute trust in Christ. She realized Karen would welcome this man's request.
Pearl jotted a quick note to Liam McCloskey, enclosing an old photograph of karen and telling him a little about her daughter and her faith.
...One autumn evening as the men in the Magilligan Bible study met for prayer, a young girl named Karen McKeown headed their list. Dr. Holley had told them the week before about the young Protestant girl who had been shot by the INLA. Their prayer list always contained victims of the Troubles, but Liam had felt a special responsibility for Karen's suffering. He had written to her mother.
"I head from Mrs. McKeown," Liam said, passing Karen's picture around the circle. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about her."
The group bowed their heads and joined hands. Then, one by one, the former terrorists - Catholic and Protestant - prayed for Karen McKeown and her family, asking that God heal this latest young victim of Belfast's violence.
Liam closed the prayer with the words he ahd first prayed during his months on the hunger strike. "Not ours, Lord, but Thy will be done."

By the end of her second week in the hospital, Karen slept a little more each day. Pearl treasured the moments she was awake. By the third week, meningitis set in, and Karen slipped into a coma.
Then, early one morning while the rain fell outside the hospital windows, Pearl watched her daughter die.
Shortly after that, another letter arrived from Liam McCloskey.
"Pearl, we make strange friends in this troubled land. It is to the glory of God and He who makes it possible. Remember John 8:51, 'And I tell you most solemly. Whoever keeps My Word will never see death.' Karen has left us, and even though it was no choice of mine, yet you can make a conscious decision in your own mind to see it as a gift of God. Your beautiful daugher to our beautiful Father who knows best. Surely the peace of Christ will be yours."

(Later, when Liam was released from prison and was speaking at a Prison Fellowship meeting)

Pearl climbed the stage steps and walked slowly toward Liam, arms outstretched. They hugged. Then Pearl held Liam's hand as she tearfully explained how Karen's death had been to God's glory.
"Liam told me his prayer is now that of St. Francis," she said. " "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is death, life. Where despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy." And Liam has been God's instrument of peace to me," she concluded in a chocked voice. "For he is the one who has showed me how to love God again."
By now tears glistened in many eyes as the audience strained to capture the incredible tableau: The two former terrorists, Catholic and Protestant, once sworn enemies, now standing together as brothers in Christ; the bereaved Protestant mother and the Catholic terrorist, holding hands.
Such is the reconciling power of God in Northern Ireland.

Charles Colson, God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics. Copyright 2007. Pages 394-396, 414-416