Grieving Our Lost Children

I apologize for two posts in one day. However, I wanted to share a prayer written by Dr. Walter Brueggemann following Sandy Hook School Shooting. I am praying it now.

At the moment, I don’t have any words other than, “Damn It! No More!”

GRIEVING OUR LOST CHILDREN

Another brutality,
another school killing,
another grief beyond telling...
and loss...
In Colorado,
in Wisconsin, among the Amish
 in Virginia.
Where next? 
We are reduced to weeping silence,
even as we breed a violent culture,
even as we kill the sons and daughters of our "enemies",
even as we fail to live and cherish and respect
the forgotten of our common life.
There is no joy among as we empty our schoolhouses; 
there is no health among us as we move in fear and bottomless anxiety;
there is little hope among us as we fall helpless before
the gunshot and the shriek and the blood and the panic; we pray to you only because we
do not know what else to do.
So we pray, move powerfully in our body politic,
move us toward peaceableness
that does not want to hurt or to kill,
move us toward justice
that the troubled and the forgotten may know mercy,
move us toward forgiveness that we
may escape the trap of revenge.
Empower us to turn our weapons to acts of mercy,
to turn our missiles to gestures of friendship,
to turn our bombs to policies of reconciliation
and while we are turning,
hear our sadness,
our loss, 
our bitterness.
We dare to pray our needfulness to you because you have been there on that 
gray Friday,
and watched your own Son be murdered
for "reasons of state". 
Good God, do Easter!
Here and among these families,
here and in all our places of brutality.
Move our Easter grief now...
without too much innocence-
to you Sunday joy.
we pray in the one crucified and rise
who is our Lord and Savior.
Amen.

Walter Brueggemann