Fury or Prayer: We Have a Choice

Such a weird flood of emotions. My church is part of a twice yearly, live streamed “Online Community Prayer Walk.” It always strikes me deeply, but how much more so as it falls on 9/11 and, more immediately, amidst two nation-shaking murders.

The Nine-Eleven part was intentional. Since we started these Prayer Walks in 2020, we host two a year, one usually in the winter and one in the summer, always on Thursdays. Circumstances pushed both walks later in the year than normal and with 9/11 falling on a Thursday, it seemed an incredibly appropriate date.

Weeks ago, when we were planning and preparing, I sent out to the different contributors this time’s theme of “peace.” I wrote, “whether it be peace in our divided world, peace in the wars around the world, refocusing our priorities on Christ (like it felt like everyone wanted to for a brief moment 24 years ago), etc.”

It turned out in God’s providence, to be more timely than I realized. That was God’s doing, not mine — I’m not prescient.

We are so misguided in our present moment. Our world is painfully divided where it shouldn’t be.

Consider the heartbreaking, coldblooded killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, coming home on a train after work. Major news outlets initially ignored the story because it didn’t fit their narrative of the world, even though the media usually falls over themselves to sensationalize murders. Others did cover the horrific killing, but used the unforgettable image of her horrified face as she died to seek a partisan advantage.

A political assassination — Charlie Kirk’s murder yesterday — brought a bit more civility as all but the most extreme condemned the evil act. Many politicians opposite Kirk politically actually did seem to mourn the tragedy. But still some, like Gov. J.B. Pritzker and several MSNBC hosts somehow tried to blame the murder victim for his own murder.

As did a Tennessee college administrator. Ponder that for a moment: a college administrator reflecting on an incident on a campus while the man killed was doing the quintessential activity of the Academy — participating in civil debate over ideas — turned on the victim. How have we gotten to such a twisted place?

Meanwhile, I saw a well known Christian professor and author get verbally pummeled by those more aligned with Kirk for having the audacity of admitting she didn’t often agree with him, but noting where she and he did, grieving over the violence against her fellow image bearer and praying for him (he was still alive at the time). She was doing what we need to do — modeling “I don’t have to agree to be grieved” — but the raging mob was too angry to appreciate her modeling the very civility we need and Kirk explicitly championed.

What’s missing is a path that can actually be healthy. Except, it isn’t really missing at all.

Which is why I’m glad that the Prayer Walk was scheduled for today. It’s all online, so I invite you to consider jumping on the looping video “trail” that guides us through prayer needs around the globe. I hope you will take part before day’s end — praying with people around the world is an amazing encouragement.

In a world so angry, every wrong is responded to by new wrongs. We’re all so agitated, we can’t even hear each other. We all know we need to do something different, but we keep doing the same dastardly things.

It’s time we did indeed do something different: turn to the Prince of Peace.

As I had written in that comment to a Prayer Walk contributor, twenty-four years ago, we saw a brief moment of that something different. Politicians of both sides stopped and prayed — and famously sang “God Bless America” together — pausing the divisive rhetoric for a moment. We average people did too. People went to church. People prayed.

The problems in society, if anything, have only grown larger. Our need for God’s peace is only more desperate, yet we raise angry voices on social media rather than raising prayers to the Creator.

Our continued descent shows where raging and accusing and attacking gets us.

While we boil over at our enemies, the truth remains that God loves us even when we act as His enemies. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV).

With each passing news cycle, we’ll see more murders. More school shootings. More wars. More reasons to want vengeance on our enemies. But there’s a reason God says vengeance is His alone. When we seek it ourselves, as the murderers we too often find in the news believe they are via their twisted logic, we only perpetrate further evil.

When we seek Him, though, we find the only path to true peace. Kirk himself spent most of his time in political punditry, but he also spoke regularly about his faith. Just five days ago, he tweeted, “Jesus defeated death so you can live.”

I hope that’s the thing Kirk said we all remember most. Because on our own we’ll never make every transit system safe for the innocent person coming home from work or always be civil in our disagreements. But in God’s presence, we find the One who will.