A Prayer For Parkland (In Response To Today's Episode Of The Daily)

March 5th, 9:22am
Starbucks, Tuskawilla & Red Bug

Father,

Please help everyone affected by the Parkland shooting—the kids who survived and their families, and the families of the ones who didn’t make it, and the shooter and his family and friends.

Draw them close to you.

Help them to recover and heal.

Help the shooter to understand and feel the weight of what he did and to repent.

Help our nation to take the steps necessary to keep these things from happening as much as laws and policy can help, without taking the joy our of everyday life.

I pray for all these kids walking around with dark thoughts, lonely, pushed down and made fun of, who think about taking revenge and showing everyone what they can do. I pray you will get to them, put people in their lives who can show them truth and love and joy and peace, who can turn them away from becoming something dark and monstrous and toward someone making a positive difference in the world and saving life instead of taking it.

Help the entertainment industry to take some responsibility too, and to decide to make creative, original games, shows, and movies that are about more than running around killing, shooting, and blowing stuff up (or less…whichever would be better).

And help the makers and sellers of assault rifles and assault weapons which are designed specifically to take human lives to rethink what they do and why they do it, and to maybe decide to stop making those things, or at least stop selling them for all but military use.

I pray if the government fails to intervene, that the marketplace will step up instead, as they have done a little bit.

Show us how crazy we are to glorify weapons that take life just with a tiny movement of a finger.

No work, no skill, nothing but aiming a stick and the slight pull of one finger.

Teach us how to love like you love, Father, how to see the world like you see it, and how to live like you want us to live.

Amen.