LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Everyone is praying. That much we know. Government leaders are praying. Praying for the victims, their families, for Louisville. Sure. Thoughts and prayers. All right.
Louisville, let us pray.
Lord, we're back.
We come to you again, asking for comfort for lost friends and co-workers, fathers and mothers and sons and daughters. Comfort all of them, please. Bless and protect those we send into harm's way, and their co-workers and families. Bring them peace, safety and grace. And thank you for the strength you give them to make those sacrifices for us.
Comfort all of the rest of us, too, Lord. But not too much. Many of us are far too comfortable with these events as it is.
We ask for your grace and protection, though we know we don't deserve it. We know this isn't how prayer works. We know that no invisible force field of protection is coming.
Lord, I'm sure you've noticed by now, when we have potholes in our streets, we don't pray to you to fix them. We take care of those ourselves.
We believe in the power of prayer, Lord, a great many of us. But we keep bringing prayer to a gun fight, and that's not enough. Because you've given us other weapons.
We've been blessed, we know, with intellect and courage and a sense of right and wrong, yet we refuse to use these tools you've given us to stop our fellow humans from being shot to death in their workplaces and schools and churches and even homes.
You have given us power, Lord, yet we act powerless. We pray for comfort but do not work for protection. When natural disasters hit, we come to you, but we also send heavy equipment and money and manpower and we get to work cleaning up debris and rebuilding structures.
But in the face of these unnatural disasters, this man-made destruction, we cower in fear. We close our eyes, bow our heads, and continue just as we did before. We openly flaunt the plain truth of the matter.
Lord, it has not escaped us, nor you, that the leading killer of children in our country is gun violence. But we'd rather come to you for healing than use the sense you have given us to stop the slaughter, even of our most defenseless population. We would rather sacrifice these children on the altar of our own stubborn wills and our own bloated political pockets. We stand guard over our guns, and condemn our children. What kind of people do that?
Forgive us, Lord. Again.
You could not be blamed for not responding. These supplications must grow tiresome, like the pleas of a child wanting to be carried instead of getting up and walking.
Grant us the strength, Lord, to rise up. And raise up for us leaders who will be able to transcend our petty politics to a place of progress. Grant us the wisdom to reason with each other and with a life-and-death problem in our midst. Give us hearts to act, and hearts for each other, to lay aside, for once, our egos and pride and desire to have the last word on each other.
We may not be able to change the heart of a shooter. We might not be able to heal the pain of mental health issues or other sickness. We can try. We are trying. Changing hearts is your business, Lord. We cannot stamp out evil. But we can stop putting guns into its hands. Grant us that wisdom and strength.
Let us look on these victims, shattered lives and hopes dashed on a sunny Monday morning in Louisville. Rouse our hearts to their pain and the pain in this city every day for families experiencing the very same thing. Let it awaken in us, at long last, a determination to find a better way, lest one day, we find that the one thing being pried from the cold, dead, hands of our nation is our own soul.
And give me faith, Lord, because I do not believe we will do any of those things.
What I do believe is that we will be back soon, uttering the same prayer. Because we have prayed it before.
Until next time,
Amen.
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