Columbine

Columbine

God gave us a glimpse of the future.

RACHEL SCOTT was just eight when her father, Pastor Darrell Scott, walked out on her mother, Beth, leaving her with five children. A year later Rachel’s grandparents helped her mom move to Littleton, Colorado, and buy a home.

When Rachel was twelve, she had a life-changing spiritual encounter. She later wrote in her journal, “Everyone was there at the altar, and I felt so drawn to it. You have to understand that I was so young . . . to be drawn that way, it was nothing short of God. . . . That night I accepted Jesus into my heart. I was saved.” From that time on her family saw a spiritual depth beginning to develop in Rachel.

Two years later Rachel’s mother remarried. During this difficult adjustment Rachel became increasingly withdrawn and private. When she was sixteen, her mother gave her a journal, the first of many. Rachel began to chronicle her spiritual journey and commitment to Christ—a commitment that cost her deeply. She broke up with the boy she loved in order to keep herself chaste and later was rejected by five of her closest friends for talking openly about her faith. On April 20, 1998, one year to the day before she died, she wrote these words: “I have no more personal friends at school. But you know what . . . it’s all worth it to me. . . . If I have to sacrifice everything I will.” Rachel had no idea of the sacrifice she would ultimately make.

On April 20, 1999, Rachel sat outside the cafeteria when two troubled students armed with guns came up the stairs at Columbine High School. They opened fire, hitting her three times. After leaving to find more victims, they returned to where Rachel lay crying in pain. One of them lifted her head by her ponytail and jeered, “Do you believe in God?” She answered, “Yes.” He put the gun to her temple and killed her.

About a month after Rachel’s funeral, her father received a phone call from a stranger who told him about a dream he had. As Darrell recalled it, “He dreamed about her eyes and a flow of tears that were watering something that he couldn’t quite see in the dream. He was adamant about the eyes and tears and wanted to know if that meant anything to me. . . . He told me that the dream had haunted him for days, and he knew there was a reason for it.”

Her father had no idea what the dream could mean. Several days later he picked up Rachel’s backpack from the sheriff’s office. Inside were two journals, one with a bullet hole through it. He turned to the last page of her most recent diary and was dumbfounded to see a drawing of her eyes with a stream of thirteen tears watering a rose. The tears appeared to turn into drops of blood as they touched the rose. The number of tears matched the number of victims at Columbine. It practically took his breath away to see in Rachel’s final diary exactly what the stranger had described to him a week earlier.

Looking in previous diaries, her parents discovered that same rose drawn a year before Rachel’s death. The earlier drawing simply showed the rose with the bloodlike drops, not her eyes or the clear tears, and it showed the rose growing up out of a columbine plant, the state flower from which Columbine High School got its name.

Rachel’s diaries reveal the heart of a young woman who loved her Lord. When the time came to put her faith on the line, she was prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice.

Reflection

Are you willing to put your faith on the line and speak boldly of your Savior? If we follow Rachel’s example of committing ourselves completely to Christ, we too will be willing to sacrifice all if called upon to do so.

If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life.

Luke 9:24