Children Without an Inheritance
Prophecy, in the biblical sense, is more than foretelling the future. It is also trying to understand the present in the light of God’s revealing Word. For many people, perhaps for most people, the very idea that a magazine writer or their parish priest should dare to speak of “prophecy,” or call them to it, is ridiculous and lacking in humility. And yet, real prophecy is entirely about humility. It is the admission that God understands what we do not—what we cannot use our fallen human minds or limited human wisdom to understand. “Thus saith the Lord” is a surrender, therefore, and not a boast.
The need for such surrender struck me more fiercely than usual as I tried to sort through the accounts of the February murder of a six-year-old girl by a six-year-old boy in Michigan, and more intensely still as I read the reactions to it. As is too often the case, the boy was being housed (“raised” seems too approving a word) with his mother and her boyfriend, or as one paper described him, an “alleged uncle.” His father, meanwhile, is serving time in the county jail. There he informed authorities that people at the house traded crack cocaine for guns.
His report appears accurate. The gun the boy used to kill his classmate in their first-grade classroom was already “hot” before he pulled the trigger. He took it from a bedroom where it had been kept, loaded, by a now indicted nineteen-year-old man who also lived with him in the “flophouse” (what the local prosecutor called the place). When police searched the premises, they found both a supply of drugs and another stolen weapon, a twelve-gauge shotgun.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Louis R. Tarsitano (d. 2005), a former associate editor of Touchstone, was a priest of the Anglican Church in America and rector of St. Andrew?s Church in Savannah, Georgia. He also was the co-author, with Peter Toon, of Neither Archaic Nor Obsolete: The Language of Common Prayer & Public Worship (Brynmill Press, Ltd., 2003).
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Family from the online archives
32.4—July/August 2019
Today's Culture Wars Are Both Ancient & Modern by Allan C. Carlson
24.4—July/August 2011
The Cultural Marxists’ Strategic Assault on Religion, Life & Family by Patrick F. Fagan
33.2—March/April 2020
Encounters with Faith & Forgiveness in Communities of Faith by Nicole M. King
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
on a Saint's Charism That Cures Toxic Perfectionism by Colleen Carroll Campbell
31.6—November/December 2018
The Slow Vindication of Leon Podles by S. M. Hutchens
35.2—Mar/Apr 2022
on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
