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12-04-2015, 04:20 PM
Praying is what some of the terrified victims reported doing as they tried to find safety during this week's tragic shooting in San Bernardino. It's what many of us are doing right now to express empathy and compassion for the victims' families and friends. As a Christian minister, my faith teaches me to "pray without ceasing."
When the New York Daily News printed the headline, "God Isn't Fixing This," they got it wrong. Prayer does matter. But they also got it right.
Prayer alone cannot fix these troubled and dangerous times. Nor can prayer be used by politicians -- or any of us -- to excuse inaction or to demonstrate one's compassion, while continuing to support gun policies that will only allow more shootings. This unrelenting gun violence has caused more deaths inside the United States, on American soil, than all the U.S. lives lost in recent wars on foreign soil. It cannot be fixed by prayer alone.
However, prayer creates space; space -- inside the individual, inside the community, inside the nation -- to allow us to hear the voice of the Divine. It invites us to be humble, disrupting our certitude, realizing that we may be on the wrong track. Prayer aligns us with the will of God, not our own. It calls us up short and invites confession (we've fallen short), repentance (we've got to turn ourselves around), intercession (we lift up others and our groaning worthy world), to propel us forward beyond fear, isolation and depression.
My colleagues and I have started calling this way of praying "prophetic grief." In the wake of the Charleston shootings at Mother Emanuel Church, our Auburn Senior Fellows who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh adopted the hashtag #PropheticGrief" -- to express our understanding that grief isn't merely numbingly passive, nor merely empathetic, but actually prophetic, which means active. We grieve and pray; and then we act.
The best of our sacred traditions remind us that we are bound together as those made in the image of God and entrusted with care for each other, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
Prayer alone will not fix these troubled times, and that is what my faith also teaches me. "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also," (James 2:14-26). Prayer with action can change hearts and minds, culture, policies and even laws. Prayer with action can remind us that equating Islam with terrorism is bigotry we won't tolerate. Prayer with action means policies that offer shelter to those desperately fleeing terror abroad. Prayer with action means laws that keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and those who are mentally disturbed with sensible background checks.
God is calling people of faith and moral courage -- whatever your tradition or politics -- to join together in prayer and action to choose life and not more death. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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When the New York Daily News printed the headline, "God Isn't Fixing This," they got it wrong. Prayer does matter. But they also got it right.
Prayer alone cannot fix these troubled and dangerous times. Nor can prayer be used by politicians -- or any of us -- to excuse inaction or to demonstrate one's compassion, while continuing to support gun policies that will only allow more shootings. This unrelenting gun violence has caused more deaths inside the United States, on American soil, than all the U.S. lives lost in recent wars on foreign soil. It cannot be fixed by prayer alone.
However, prayer creates space; space -- inside the individual, inside the community, inside the nation -- to allow us to hear the voice of the Divine. It invites us to be humble, disrupting our certitude, realizing that we may be on the wrong track. Prayer aligns us with the will of God, not our own. It calls us up short and invites confession (we've fallen short), repentance (we've got to turn ourselves around), intercession (we lift up others and our groaning worthy world), to propel us forward beyond fear, isolation and depression.
My colleagues and I have started calling this way of praying "prophetic grief." In the wake of the Charleston shootings at Mother Emanuel Church, our Auburn Senior Fellows who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh adopted the hashtag #PropheticGrief" -- to express our understanding that grief isn't merely numbingly passive, nor merely empathetic, but actually prophetic, which means active. We grieve and pray; and then we act.
The best of our sacred traditions remind us that we are bound together as those made in the image of God and entrusted with care for each other, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: "caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
Prayer alone will not fix these troubled times, and that is what my faith also teaches me. "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also," (James 2:14-26). Prayer with action can change hearts and minds, culture, policies and even laws. Prayer with action can remind us that equating Islam with terrorism is bigotry we won't tolerate. Prayer with action means policies that offer shelter to those desperately fleeing terror abroad. Prayer with action means laws that keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and those who are mentally disturbed with sensible background checks.
God is calling people of faith and moral courage -- whatever your tradition or politics -- to join together in prayer and action to choose life and not more death. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. (http://start.westnet.ca/newstempch.php?article=terms.html/) It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
http://rc.feedsportal.com/r/244160606978/u/0/f/677045/c/35496/s/4c019d1c/sc/7/rc/1/rc.img (http://rc.feedsportal.com/r/244160606978/u/0/f/677045/c/35496/s/4c019d1c/sc/7/rc/1/rc.htm)
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