Holy God,
We grieve the hole in the windshield — not large, not dramatic, just a small, terrible opening where a life was shattered. A circle of absence. A quiet scream in glass. A single point through which the world split open.
We pray for Renee — for the breath stolen from her body, for the poetry she can no longer write, for the children she can no longer hold. Hold her now where bullets cannot reach, where violence has no authority, where every life is known as precious.
We pray for all the lives ended by a single pull of a trigger — names remembered and names forgotten, stories cut short, love interrupted. Let none of them be lost to statistics or silence.
We pray, too, for the life on the other end of the gun — for the one who shoots before fully seeing and understanding. God of mercy, heal our reflex to control and kill. Unteach the habits that harden the heart. Rewrite the narrative that calls violence “necessary.”
We pray for the witnesses of violence, the scenes they can’t unsee, the shaking hands, the sleepless nights, the question that will not loosen its grip: How could this happen? Gather their trauma with tenderness. Hold what their bodies now carry.
We pray for the community that returned after her Honda Pilot was towed away, standing on ordinary pavement made holy by grief, lighting candles, refusing forgetfulness, holding one another because it is the only thing left to do. Bless this stubborn love. Bless this vigil of lament.
God, this is madness. This is not the world you imagined. Meet us here, we pray, at the broken glass, at the candle flame, at the place where grief insists on being seen. Make us people who grieve honestly, and labor, together, for a world where prayers like this aren’t needed.
Amen.
