A Prayer After the Violence in Baton Rouge and Dallas

In a week already filled with tragedy around the world, this week saw the death of five police officers, this bringing the nation wide total to 25 for the year.  Earlier in the week, two white police officers shot an African-American man in Louisiana, the shooting that was caught on video caused wide protests across the country.  It was during a demonstration that had been otherwise peaceful, that a sniper open fire killing five officers and wounding others.  Every day, men and women of law enforcement across this country put their lives on the line in order to keep society safe.  These killings are heartbreaking and beyond tragic.  These incidents potentially can divide us or can unite us as a country.  We can unite in our support for law enforcement, we can unite in our support for peaceful demonstration, we can unite in support of continued dialogue between police and minority communities, or we can fall into blame, violence, and hate.  It is ok to be angry on all side, but it is not ok to allow our anger to turn on each other at a time in which we need each other the most.  The church professes that Jesus is Lord, acts like these remind us that there are other forces at work, arrayed against God's kingdom, but we are called to the claim that God's good overcomes evil in the end, that there is a force more powerful than the evil and that we are called to be witnesses and ambassadors of this love to a broken and hurting world.

A lament following violence in St. Paul, Baton Rouge, and Dallas

July 8, 2016

God of our weary years and our silent tears,

We are shattered by the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile

Devastated by the loss of five Dallas police officers and the wounding of seven more,

gunned down while protecting a citizens’ peaceful protest

We are horrified, angry, despairing

We struggle with a yearning for justice and judgment--

a knowledge that our prayers alone are not enough

a hurt that is beyond speech

a fear that we do not know a way forward that will help

an emptiness: we have been here before, too many times,

and we know we will walk this bloodied path again.

What can we do, with such fear and anger and longing,

that can bind us together, rather than further tear apart the fabric of our common life?

We are failing one another, and we are failing You:

our Maker, our Mercy, our Justice, our Peace.

We pray for our neighbors in St. Paul, in Baton Rouge, in Dallas

and for our whole broken and heartbroken nation

in this hard season of violence, death and distrust

each one lost is a child made in Your image.

each survivor is beloved to You

each afflicted community is part of your commonwealth.

We lift our prayers for each life lost, each family bereaved,

each neighborhood whose fabric has been violently torn asunder by bullets and hatred and fear.

We pray for ourselves, that this hurt, this outrage, this yearning for justice

 will not fade from our minds before our hearts are broken open

by Your passion for mercy, justice, and love.

           

Restore our hope, our heart,

our sense of the possibility of holiness and wholeness in your creation.

Tend the fires of our rage so that they burn for justice and warm hearts that have grown cold.

Make the waters of our tears nourish the river that flows through the city of God,

and the tree of life that is for the healing of the nations.

In the name of Jesus, we pray. 

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Laurie A. Kraus

Coordinator, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance

pcusa link to prayer

(offsite)