Faces of Children is an ecumenical prayer ministry under the auspices of First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas. Our mission is to initiate ministries of prayer for children in churches, communities, and neighborhoods. In doing so, we seek to provide an opportunity for people of God to join together, learn about children and their needs throughout the world, and celebrate Christ's love (especially as it relates to children).Hello Friends,
I hope you can join me tomorrow (Wednesday, October 14) for prayer at 11:30, and for those who can stay, lunch following. For now we will continue to meet in the gym conference room.
From the windows near my office, I can see the roof of the public High School next door. I can remember the first major school shooting; I was in High School when the Columbine massacre occurred. I still remember sitting in the high school library watching the news footage and thinking about how the kids who had been shot were at school just like me.
Now I’m a mother, and if I stand in just the right corner of a friend’s office I can see the church preschool playground where my own children play during their recess times. I watch as a group of kids play a spirited game of hide and seek, shrieking and laughing as they find each other. Children aren’t very good at hiding and being silent. But in schools across the country, that’s exactly what our kids are doing… they are practicing Active Shooter Drills and Lockdown Drills. As one teacher put it in an OpEd piece published in the New York Times, our Pre-K kids are “rehearsing for death.”
There have been more than 140 school shootings since Sandy Hook, says Malcolm Gladwell in an article called “Thresholds of Violence” that appears in The New Yorker this week. Gladwell goes on to call these shootings a “modern phenomenon” and demonstrates how riot theory can help explain why we see so many copycat incidents. He closes his piece with this sobering thought, “In the day of Eric Harris, we could try to console ourselves with the thought that there was nothing we could do, that no law or intervention or restrictions on guns could make a difference in the face of someone so evil. But the riot has now engulfed the boys who were once content to play with chemistry sets in the basement. The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts.”
As I sat down to put together this week’s prayer email and prayed about what I should include, I felt like the Holy Spirit specifically put this issue of school shootings on my heart. It is a crisis that’s growing exponentially and affects diverse communities across our country; 140 school shootings in the last three years and 3 college campus shootings within the first 10 days of October. So instead of sending a digest on a variety of topics this week, I’d like to invite you to join me in praying for a singular issue… praying for God to miraculously intervene and stop this culture of violence that has spilled into our schools. Please join me in praying that our children have no need to rehearse for their deaths and can simply get back to playing hide and seek. I’d like to encourage you to perhaps take your prayer group on the road to a local school, if possible, and gather to pray on the campus and ask for God’s protection and peace to rest on it and the children and staff inside
Thank you for your continued passion for vulnerable children around the world. There are a lot of hurting and broken and dark places in this world, and I think as a church, we most look like Jesus when we show up in those places, lifting them up in prayer and extending our hands in love.
Blessings,
Carrie J. McKean
Faces of Children Director
First Presbyterian Church of Midland, Texas
(432) 684-7821 x153
If you have prayer requests about children, those who care for them, those who have authority over them, or those who harm them (the really hard prayers to say sometimes), please send them to info@facesofchildren.net
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