Prayers for Orlando, and for our Hearts

I am remembering the old days when I used to get up at 6:00 every Sunday morning and come downstairs, turn the radio on and write my Sunday prayers.  I would get a cup of coffee and sit on the floor by the coffee table with a sheet of paper folded in half in front of me.  National Public Radio always had a Sunday morning, "Voices in the News", on Sunday morning, and as I listened to that segment, I would consider what to pray for that morning.

It was a good discipline.  It helped me remember what had happened the past week, to be connected with the larger community and world.  Since it was a small congregation, and I was the solo pastor, all of the intercessory prayer responsibility on Sunday fell on me.

I have not listened to the news before church on Sunday morning for awhile.

So I did not know about what happened in Orlando, about the massacre at the nightclub, The Pulse, until after church.  I did not offer a prayer during worship.  I got a text from a friend after church.  That's how I found out.

And I know that we have to do more than prayer.  Prayer is not enough.  But it would have been a start, to have prayed on Sunday morning, if I had known.

So I wish that I had still had that old discipline, that I could sit on the floor and hear the news of the world on Sunday morning.  Because the news of the world needs to come to church, where we can repent, and lament, and ask God to change our hearts, so hard.

O God, heal us.
Is this who we are?  Show us the truth.
Comfort those who mourn.
They are so many, today.
Turn the hearts of those who hate.
Help us to see beauty, again, where we have seen it,
and where we have not noticed it,
because we were blind.
IN the name of your Son, Jesus,
who died, and who lives, for every single one of us.
AMEN

Inclusive Laments

Like everyone else, I heard the news about the terror at the Boston Marathon almost as it was happening, in real time.  Though I will admit, I did not spend the rest of the day glued to the TV, and I don't have many searing visual images in my mind, I'm still haunted by what happened, lamenting the lives lost, imagining the grief of those who lost limbs or lives of loved ones, not being able to imagine the mind of the one who did this.

I do not live in Boston.  I don't even live on the East Coast, so I'm far away from what happened.  I didn't even think I knew anyone who was there, although later I found out that the son of our former pastor was running that day.  He was one of the elite runners, and had already finished when the bombs went off.  But still.  My feelings are not true grief, not like the grief of those who were really there.

Still, I can't help but lament.  We can't help but lament, can we?  Every time we hear cruel things happen, we can't help but lament at the incomprehensible cruelty possible in God's good world.  Sometimes it's the cancer diagnosis of a good friend.  Sometimes it's terror in Boston.

But the problem is that there are terrible things happening all over the world, in places we don't even know exist.  For example, did you know that on the same day that bombs killed and maimed people in Boston, a US bomb killed thirty people who were celebrating at a wedding in Afghanistan?  We said it was a mistake.

Sometimes we excuse our inability to really lament for tragedies far from home.  "Those are violent places," we say.  But the truth is, the world is a violent place, from Boston to Afghanistan to Waco to Myanmar.  If every human life is valuable and beautiful and a creation of God, the ravages of cancer and the ravages of war and the ravages of tragedy are all worthy to be lamented.

I lived in Japan once, long ago.  It was so long ago that sometimes I never lived there, never saw Mount Fuji  rise in the background, never heard the voices of kindergarten children chattering and never smelled the skewered meat sizzling at the train stations.  It was so long ago, but once in awhile I can still imagine the God-beloved people I knew there, far away, across the world.

Here is the impossible thing:  to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep, across boundaries, across ideologies.  To love the ones that God loves, somehow, to practice more inclusive lamenting.