Our Friends in Belgium Check In

          

The city of Liege, in happier times

Our friends in Belgium have checked in following a silence of a few days after the shootings in Liege. Our friends are well.  Due to fuel prices, they have not gone out a lot this year,or this season and consequently were not shopping in the square in Liege when the attack occurred.   If the fuel had been cheaper, or perhaps in another perhaps better economic year, they might have been.  So far, about 7 people are dead, including the gunman, and the cleaning lady who was working next door to the gunman's home, and the infant.  More than 122 people are badly injured and in hospitals.  Please pray for these people and for the families who are grieving the losses of their family members..
               Also of note, the gunman was an Arab who had been on the criminal fringe since his teen years.  Just as the gunman in Norway had been a Christian, and we did not begin blaming Christians for the Norwegian attack, we cannot blame Arabs for the terrible act of this mentally ill man, who happens to be an Arab. Our friends have indicated that anti-Muslim sentiment has swelled since these attacks. We need to remember that sometimes psychotic people kill others, whether they are Muslim, atheists, Christians, or any other faction or variety of faith.

A shop in Liege