This Shall Not Continue: A Prayer to End Gun Violence

Oh America, where the guns roam free,
blood stained streets full
of weeping parents and neighbors.

Where Jeremiah’s prophetic tears for innocent lives
cruelly torn from this world
stream eternally down our cheeks,
as weapons of death turn infinite profits
plowshares turned into mass-produced swords
and there is no comfort, only piercing grief.

Why do we continue to do this to each other?
Are we simply waiting our turn? Our children’s turns?
There can be no peace in a city where innocent lives
are so casually undone.

Dear God, our despairing hearts have watched
this endless hellish cycle for far too long.
We, your children, are refractions of You. We know.
We hear Your pain welling up from within our souls
with each and every deadly bullet fired
into Your Images, old and young,
over and over and over and over.

These tears on our cheeks,
this pain in our souls,
this rage in our minds,
this sacred work for a terrified world
work that shouldn’t be needed
in this world of Your Imagining -

- these are Your Tears on our cheeks,
Your Pain in our souls,
Your Rage in our minds,
Your Compassion coursing through us.

This is Your Work in our hands.

And we declare: this shall not continue.

We will, Holy One, build a world of Love,
where children can safely go about their lives,
where neighbors act like neighbors,
where hope feels nearer,
where You are seen by everyone in everyone.

We will, through the tears, pain, and the rage,
through the grief, the grief… the grief…
and through the Love, Dear God,
we will rescue this world.

In the memories of all those we’ve lost
and in the names of those to come,
we will End Gun Violence.

We ask of you, God:
Be with us, as we do this sacred work.
Bless the intentions of our hearts
and bless the works of our hands.
Heal us as we work to save Your children.

Amen.