amrkelly;) I am not angry at all, a little surprised, but not angry. You see the commitments we make with the words of our mouth are contracts and agreements and I believe they should be honored, however because I listen to the the Word of God and see it way differently, I'm sure than most here, I do not reply to often to much of what I read unless it really strikes a cord. In the beginning of this the thing what stood out to me was the utter lack of mercy and compassion toward one whom we are supposed to be willing to lay our lives down for. But so much for that.
I do however want to point out something that we have all read and no one talks about because...well because it is wrapped into a nice little story in the birth of Jesus, which we examine, perhaps very, ummmm....much the same, year in year out. That is the contract the wise men made with Herod Matt 2:7-9 plus a few , anyway they made a contractual agreement to report back, they gave their word..Now we all know that God warned them and the rest of the historical account, the question is one of MORAL OBEDIENCE to the conviction of God laid upon them, Was their obedience sin or an honest attempt to obey what they believe they received from God after the fact? In the same way, could this poor sisters action be something after the fact?

Conclusion: It does not really matter since we can not know the matter in its entirety. What does matter is our response toward a fellow saint who needs our prayers and encouragement...who knows....she may very well be reading what everyone here is writing right now? No body really knows exactly who is visiting this site on a regular or semi-regular basis, or perhaps just stumbles onto it. I do know one thing, if it was me and I read what I've read here on this thread, I would get really angry, may even stumble at some of the comments, and that is not God Honoring, not at all.

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D.Miller

Ok, I can see your point here. I think one report I read said that the child was 4 years old, it has been so long since my children were 4 I can't remember if they were in diapers or not at that age? I read several articles reported from several different news outlets. The Family Services statement in one report made a statement that they train all foster parents in how to deal with the children in a classroom setting. But my best guess is that the woman had to many buttons pushed and "went off". Probably the bruise or welt she left was due to the diaper...good cushion there:) and the spoon may have missed on 1 of the swings and caught the child's upper leg and that is where the bruise was because in one of the news articles I read it commented that the Natural mother on a supervised visit saw her daughter bend over and thats when she saw the bruise and everything came to light.

Regardless of the hows and whys you are correct about laying the blame on God, but I personally could not find anything where she directly made a statement about moral conviction on this incident. I think its probably overzealous reporting, however, that said in the States here more and more parents that are strong outwardly Christian in their stance are losing their own flesh and blood children over this very same issue. There have been more and more cases popping up all over the Country and it is clearly a stage set for battle and one where eventually the Christian community will be forced to fight in courts across this land or just roll over and allow the government to control us and the way we raise our children. However as to the rod of correction, a good spanking (parents under control) never hurt any child in the long run. I have dealt with young people for more than 20 years and there has been a few which you can tell have clearly never been corrected in their young life, let alone spanked. Anyway...God Bless bro. daryl

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D.Miller