This was the first petition in the Prayers of the People at North Church Queens this past Sunday, December 16, 2012. I wrote it Sunday morning, just before worship.
God of comfort and
consolation,
our hearts are heavy this
morning,
as are the hearts of our
nation and the world.
As Rachel weeps for her
children in Ramah,
we
bitterly weep and wail for the twenty children
of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut,
and also for the six teachers
and school administrators there
tragically
and senselessly gunned down this past Friday.
As we raise our lamentations
to you,
we also pray that you will
comfort and console the Newtown community,
the parents, family and friends of those slain,
the first responders who faced an unimaginable and
unspeakable scene,
and all those seeking to make sense of the senseless.
Never let our prayers serve
as an excuse for inaction,
so motivate and empower us as individuals and as a nation
to address our culture of gun violence,
violence
in the media,
and violent video games,
which desensitize us and our youth
to absurd and inexcusable violence.
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A week later, on December 23, I began the Prayers of the People with these two original petitions:
God of comfort and consolation, as our nation continues to mourn the deaths of those killed in Newtown Connecticut; we continue to raise our lamentations to you. As we prepare to celebrate our savior’s birth, the very same savior who called to him children and said that only those like a child can enter his kingdom, help us keep the children of this nation safe from harm, and safe from the culture of violence that so permeates our nation.
May we address our national culture of gun violence, and agree on common sense gun safety that will both protect rights and protect life, safeguarding us all from fear, intimidation, and the proliferation of semi-automatic weapons and high capacity ammunition clips and magazines, so that we, and all your children, may live in peace.
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