Excerpt from Pastor Evelyn Wald from St. Stephen Lutheran Church On the eve of Thanksgiving, I am acutely aware of the empty chairs around countless tables due to gun-related deaths. Gun-related suicides rank highest right here in Centre County. The recent shooting in Johnstown is yet one more example of the need for gun safety. Access to guns is a great concern. Our Interfaith Coalition for Gun Safety provides gun locks and encourages the storage of ammunition to be separated from the storage of guns. We need to prevent these tragedies. We CAN prevent these tragedies. We ask you to keep children, teens and adults safe from gun-related injuries or death. You can literally save lives with greater care and attention to the guns you possess. My prayers are with families who mourn the loss of a loved one. We hold you close to our hearts and will continue our work to raise awareness and prevent future deaths. May the safety of our families and communities be in the forefront of your hopes for the future. I am thankful for everyone who joins with us in our mission to save lives. Excerpts from 9/8/2024 sermon by Tom Beers at University Baptist & Brethren Church Once again I stand in the pulpit on a Sunday after a school shooting. I’ve had to do this too many times. This week I heard many people, from politicians to ordinary people, ask once again, “how long will we let this go on?” Young people and parents cried out … “do something!” And yet already, just days later, it is fading from the news, and we have that sinking feeling that it will happen again … and we’ll respond once again, saying, “how long?” My biggest fear (and I can feel it in myself sometimes) is that we will treat these acts of gun violence as normal or inevitable, because it is just too frustrating, too heartbreaking to keep expecting things to change. When that happens we eventually stop crying out vigorously, and at worst we stop crying out at all … No matter how many times politicians, or presidents, or prime ministers, or judges, or voters refuse to take action for justice … no matter how powerless we may feel to effect change … being people of faith means that we must never stop crying out against injustice. We must never stop demanding of those in power that justice be enacted, because we trust – we believe! – that God is a just God, and therefore injustice will not stand forever.
 So, let us not move too quickly beyond this week’s school shooting. We must not numb ourselves against the horror of it. We feel this horror most when gun violence is in schools, or when it claims multiple victims, but let us remember that gun killings are happening every day in ones and twos that never make it beyond the local news. So, whether it is 4 families in Georgia who are in pain, or 21 in Uvalde, or 1 in north Philadelphia, we should be horrified and not flee from the horror. We must not allow the seemingly intractable politics that prevent sensible gun regulations to render us silent out of frustration. Likewise, we must cry out, we must make demands, whenever we see or experience injustice. Not just the injustice of allowing gun killings to go on and on without taking action, but the injustices of systemic racism, toxic patriarchy, inequity in education, inequity in health care, wars of revenge, or a politics of cynicism.