PSALM OF LAMENT RE: VIRGINIA SHOOTINGS
Comfort your children’s sorrow, lamenting mothers, bitter fathers,
A nation wounded.
Lead us to love and life in You
where our guns are beaten into plough shares.
NOW is the opportunity for local churches, regions, conferences and our denomination to make a bold statement calling for gun control. Now is the time for our church leaders -- ministers and campus pastors-- to encourage and enable members of our churches to contact our politicians and the NRA with our cries for sanity and restricted access to weapons of such destruction. While we apply balm and succour to the wounded and bereaved, let us each accept the responsibility to cry out in the face of this tragedy for a change in our national ethos, laws and life style. When the 1996 massacre of 35 people in Port Arthur, Australia occurred, the Prime Minister sensed the outrage of the Australian people and responded with federal gun control laws which continue today. While our president and other politicians use the constitutional phrase "the right to bare arms" to justify access to modern guns, may we, as faithful Christians remember the God of love to whom we pledge allegiance. May we never forget that our nation is "under God." May we declare our homes and communities not only "Nuclear Free Zones" but also "Gun Free Zones." Let us follow the Christ who is the Prince of Peace, and call for gun control throughout our land, TODAY.
Psalm: Virginia Lament
I weep, oh God.
I wonder, "Where the hell are you?"
Alan stops me in the faculty lounge,
"Disastrous news from Virginia.
A gunman. Thirty-three dead.
Virginia – my heart drops,
for she is the land of my infancy,
my childhood
my adolescence.
I think of Kevin and Mike
still living there.
Are their children students at VPI?
Have they been injured, or worse killed?
And You, oh God, what are you doing about it?
This land that prides itself as a "Christian Country"
How long will you let this go on?
O God, O God
I know that you do not forsake us.
As one is wounded, so you are wounded.
As my heart bleeds and I weep,
so your heart bleeds and You weep.
Comfort your children’s sorrow, lamenting mothers, bitter fathers,
A nation wounded.
Lead us to love and life in You
where our guns are beaten into plough shares.
Psalm by Tod Gobledale
written during a community worship service at Churches of Christ Theological College, Mulgrave, Australia
