A PRayer for Children:

Spurred by the Connecticut School Shooting of Dec 14 but also remembering the dozens of children who die needlessly every single day:

God of life, God of laughter, God of death, God of tears,

Even as we pray for those families whose hearts break with an act that we honestly believe should be rare (though increasingly it is not) we also remember that hearts are breaking and broken all over the world on a daily basis.

We hold in prayer all those who live in places where children die. Places where children die because there is not food. Places where children die because the marketplace is wracked by a suicide bomb. Places where children die because they happen to be too close to a place that is deemed by someone to be a military target. Places where children die simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Places where children die simply because there is nobody willing or able to care for them properly. Places where children die because...

God we read that list and our hearts ache for a world that sometimes feels too broken to ever be repaired.

We share the (apparently) idealistic dream that children somehow should be spared from the harsh realities of life. And yet we know it to not be true. And so, trusting in the hope of faith that the world can indeed be changed, we share the ancient words : Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.

May it be so.   May it be so soon.  Amen