We Turn to Prayer and Action

Join the staff of The Upper Room in praying for the victims and their families of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. 

Pray with your family, friends, small groups, and communities of faith the honest prayer below. Pray for love, justice, mercy, peace, and healing for all.

While the mass shootings may be “old news” in a few weeks, prayer, the oldest, most ancient of practices, never will be. Nor will our love in action. It always will be needed, and I pray we can offer both—prayer and action—through our work always.

O God!

Another mass shooting, O God. O God.
O God! O God!

215 days of the year.
249 mass shootings thus far.

Staggering numbers. And we are right to
fall down,
cry out to you,
lament, grieve,
wail, rage.

We are right to cry:
No more! No more! No more!

We are right to ask ourselves:
How are we complicit with systems
of violence and white supremacy,
of power and greed?

We are right to feel
overwhelmed and lost,
broken and undone.

We are not right to do nothing,
to say nothing,
to feel nothing.

O God. O God.
O God! O God!

In our crying out,
In our mourning wails,
In our confusion,
In our sickness,
In our grief,

may we take a deep breath,
then one step, then another
toward just love
that has the power

to heal,
to save,
to make right.

Love in action, O God. O God.
O God! O God!

We pray.

                    ©Claire K. McKeever-Burgett 2019 

Click here to learn how you can help.

Claire K. McKeever-Burgett is the Associate Director of The Academy for Spiritual Formation, a program ministry of The Upper Room.