We are in shock and our hearts are broken by the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Our beautiful, God created world is once again a place of violence. We don’t know the exact causes, but we know that love and reconciliation is the appropriate response for followers of Jesus. God feels the pain of the people in Las Vegas and their families, just as God mourns with the homeless in Puerto Rico – all God’s children. Let us commit ourselves to prayer, to non-violent solutions to conflict, and in a week in which we remember Francis of Assisi, let us remember a prayer often identified with the wisdom of the saint.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
My friends, God is with us and all those who grieve.
Pastor Bruce