Many of us are at a loss for words.
Many of us are grieving, lamenting, angry, numb after this Tuesday May 24, 2022.
The month of May is not well. This country remains in denial and moral depravity.
From the words of my hermano Jordan Botello, “There is a deep spiritual decay here.”
Our streets have been violated. There is desecration in the land where our Black brothers and sisters sought for food in Buffalo, NY on May 14. Desecration in the house of the Lord, where our Taiwanese brothers and sisters went to worship in Laguna Woods, CA on May 15. Yesterday, another painful wave unfolded before our eyes regarding our beloved Brown children of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX.
I am not here to write empty prayers in the face of deep, entrenched, and ongoing tragedy. I am here to say how much our anger and lament is rightly existing in this moment. It is our spiritual response to the injustices and heinous acts committed against our brothers, sisters, and children on this land. It is a response to the guns, violence, mass shootings that grieve us, paralyze us as a nation.
I think of Habakkuk’s prayer for our collective communities,
“O LORD how long?” (Habbakuk 1:2)
The prophet Habakkuk was not afraid to express his discontent to God about the violence and injustice in land of Judah. Habakkuk had an open distaste for the wickedness and oppression in Judah. Through his anger, the prophet both protested and prayed. In a modern translation I would imagine Habakkuk saying, “There are guns, mass shootings, and murders of Black, Brown, and Asian bodies. Where are you God? O LORD how long?”
Beloved, know that your anger is righteous, it follows the tension and protest prayers of the prophet Habakkuk over the lawlessness, the violence in the land.
Whether or not you see your lament and anger as this, know that your indignation reaches the heavens more than any empty and false prayer.
In the same spirit of Habakkuk we cry out,
“Hear us O LORD, in our lament through these wrongs”