Tiananmen Square - 20 years later

It's hard to believe this was 20 years ago. I was only 12 when it happened, and yet the images are so written into my memory. My brother and I were sitting in the camper watching TV on the really old set, even for that day. We used to camp in our yard because we were weird but also because it was safe. We hadn't learned how dangerous the world really was just yet.

The television, on every channel, was a modern day David and Goliath. The tank could have just rolled over that man. Sure every camera around the world would have seen it, but it outweighed that guy by like 100 elephants. Why did it bother to stop? How did one man, carrying his groceries, manage to end a human rights error about to go down?

I don't know. I don't know what the students were protesting, and I don't know if their voices were really every heard. I do know that the man who stepped in front of the tanks did more that most of us would do in the same circumstance... and he is not considered to be "free" like we are.

I have wondered and worried if we get too use to our lives. We get so used to our freedoms that everything appears to be a violation of them. (There are still legitimate infractions, but getting anything less that 300 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets in prison is not one of them.) We get used to the idea that we are God's chosen and blessed people that we start to forget there are responsibilities with answering that call. Sometimes we have to stand up to tanks that far outweigh us - stand up to the fear within - to do the will of God.

I will never know that man. The world may never know who he is, but he is counted among the people I admire. Thank you just doesn't seem enough.