When 49 people are slaughtered, we lament.
And when week after week, we find that "49" was not the backbreaking straw, but rather the heartbreaking starting shot, we despair.
When it is easier to reach for a gun than a common sense solution, we pray.
When one’s capacity to love is another’s excuse to hate, we pray.
When police officers ignore a white flag because it is held by a black hand, we pray.
When eight other officers bear the brunt of a violence they did not help commit, we pray.
When a chant of "Blue Lives" is used to silence the cry of black lives, yet they are both of them beaten black and blue, we pray.
When guns are not the only problem, but certainly the variable which makes the problem possible, we pray.
When a constitutional amendment is defended more aggressively than the lives it has helped end, we pray.
When human rights are denied millions of people, yet somehow we are shocked when someone else dehumanizes them, we pray.
When an entire race has been paddling others' ships as long as they've been able to row, we pray.
When a church-going LGBTQ person is more likely to see the back of a judging hand than the curve of a crying shoulder, we pray.
When the salt of the earth feels more like salt in the wound, we pray.
When the light of the world blinds more than it shines, we pray.
When the silence of some churches on LGBTQ acceptance gets filled not with passionate peacemaking and dialogue, but instead with anguished cries, we pray.
When flesh is torn from flesh and family from family, we pray.
When a barrage of bullets is indistinguishable from the pulse of a beat, both inside a nightclub and within a country's standards of normalcy, we pray.
When victims become talking points and grief political commodity, we pray.
When the religion of millions gets defined by the fringe, radical actions of a few, we pray.
When the powerful seek to pit against each other the powerless, we pray.
When God seems absent, we question.
When we’re told love has won, but hate appears to be making a ferocious comeback, we question.
When assault rifles are treated as anything but cold machines created solely to expedite the ending of life, we question.
When we don’t know how to pray -- or even if prayers work anymore -- we question.
When some think guns are a more fundamental, more important cornerstone of our culture than the human beings who create that culture, we question.
When a presidential candidate concerns himself more with being right than with being compassionate, we question.
When we sing every Sunday that Jesus conquered death, yet people still needlessly die, we question.
But when we sing every Sunday that Jesus conquered death, we also hope. In spite of it all.
When we see that a community identified by its ability to love wholly and selflessly does just that, we stand a little taller. In spite of it all.
When we see police and protestors standing arm in arm, we open our own a little wider. In spite of it all.
When children laugh, unaware of what is because they embody what should be, we remember that good does still exist. In spite of it all.
When churches extend an open hand to all of God’s wondrous, fearful, beloved creations, we rejoice. In spite of it all.
When we realize that God weeps with us, that God rages alongside us, that God is not a god of violence but of peace; not of separation but of community; not of disparity but unity; not of hate but of love; not of judgment but of mercy; not of punishment but of grace.
When we realize this, we pray to a God worth praying to.
A God that inspires us to love. And to rebuild. And to fight like hell for the Heaven we hope for. And to believe for those who simply cannot. And to live a life not defined by fear, but rooted in openness. And to somehow, some way, wake up day after day and believe that life is worth protecting and love is worth the fight. One day, I know we’ll be proven right.
