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| On May 24, 2022, a young man opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX killing 19 students and 2 teachers. |
When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide My eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of My sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed and correct the oppressor. "Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool." + Isaiah 1:15-18
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. King Jesus, please come and be with the Uvalde community and us in the loud cries of lament, anger, desperation, fear, and determination to hope in the face of evil. Come reveal that Your victory over hell is still real and at work in the destruction in this world we have broken.
As I was reminded by a good friend this morning, in the horror of this moment, Immanuel has not forsaken us. Jesus, our Deliverer, meets us in this darkness to help us see that even this death and violence will be swallowed up in His resurrection and ascension victory. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us. We want to see. We need to see."
As we long to see, and as we wait to experience the completion of Jesus' victory, we can also pray that all those who were murdered are now experiencing the presence of Christ in paradise as we seek to do justice and love mercy on earth, as it is in heaven, in honor of those lost while lamenting a world without them.
Tomorrow, on Ascension Day, I will be praying through how we can continue to live well in light of such a reality with groans, tears, questions, and the will to hope against hope. As you continue to process these horrors, and seek to help others in processing them, too, here are a few resources that you may find beneficial:
+ ACA: Coping in the Aftermath of a Shooting
+ NASP: Talking to Children About Violence: Tips for Parents and Teachers
+ CFSTS: Helping Children Understand Frightening Events
+ EMH: A Liturgy for Grieving a National Tragedy
+ FYI: Processing the Tragedy of School Shootings
In relation to turning prayer and research into action, after a brief look at Taylor S. Schumann's When Thoughts and Prayers Aren't Enough: A Shooting Survivor's Journey into the Realities of Gun Violence, I also read this thoughtful proposal as a way to lean into this moment with focused imagination:
1. Every lawmaker at every level of government should be put on immediate administrative leave.
2. Lawmakers have 2 weeks to interview friends and families and produce a 50-page biography of one of the victims. Lawmakers must work alone on the project.
3. The paper will be graded by school teachers, who are compensated for their work. Inadequate work will be revised until it passes muster.
4. All legislators will present a 20-min biographical speech to their constituents about the victim in whose story they immersed themselves.
5. Afterward, they shall be sequestered in a school building where there’s been a shooting in the past (summer break FTW) with their colleagues until such a time as they can emerge with robust policies that experts agree will radically reduce the number and severity of violent incidents.
+ Rev. Dr. Andrew Stager, St. Patrick's Church
What is needed and what will be done are very important to invest ourselves in considering throughout the days to come. While many will say nothing will change, I don't want to settle for such cynicism. May our grief and our questions keep us embodied in this limbo to keep listening, keep collaborating, and keep seeking first the Kingdom of righteousness and justice that is near and will fully come.
Words to sit in as we seek solace from our Savior and look to continue to be conformed to Him as the peacemakers who are children of God. I close this post with a prayer from another minister that has been helping me piece together words to pray today. Perhaps these words will help you pray, too:
Loving and gracious God, we pray now even while we still grieve and lament the recent gun violence in the Korean salon in Dallas, the streets of our cities, at a church in Laguna Hills, and a racist motivated massacre in Buffalo. Again and again, we come in disbelief, lament, and mourning. We pray for the students, teachers, and community of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. We especially pray for the family members and loved ones who are left with an unfathomable heartache of loss. Be near to the brokenhearted. While we clearly condemn the evil act of the shooter, we pray for his family as they process and mourn this unconscionable crime. As we pray and mourn, give us the moral courage to also discern how we can act. We pray for hearts to change and we also pray for laws and policies that would make such gun violence rare and not a regular part of our society. Lord, we also pray for our respective lawmakers. Move and stir their hearts to lead with deep empathy. Rather than partisan politics, convict our leaders to prioritize the mental, emotional, and physical well being of those they serve—including and especially our children and youth. In a culture that sometimes feels as if we've normalized violence, may our hearts remain tender, broken, and resolute over such senseless violence. Convict us to know that even in a broken world, it doesn't have to be this way. Lord, in your mercy. Amen.
+ Rev. Eugene Cho
Hold each other close. Your lives are precious and treasured.
P.S. A couple days after posting these words, Amanda Gorman, a poet and the author of “The Hill We Climb,” “Call Us What We Carry” and “Change Sings,” wrote a new poem, "Hymn for the Hurting," to help us process the grief, tension, and longing in this moment:
The Lord bless you and keep you always,
Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.
Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.
This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.
May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.
Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.
+ Amanda Gorman, "Hymn for the Hurting"
The Lord bless you and keep you always,
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