Read
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Matthew 6:6
Reflect
Tragedy is hard to understand under the best of circumstances. But when it involves children, we have an especially hard time grasping the meaning of tragic situations. That’s why images from Oklahoma City and Sandy Hook are so confounding to us. How could such horrible things happen to children?
One particularly horrific incident happened in Flint, Michigan, in February 2000. Dedrick Owens was just six years old, but he already had a big problem with anger. One classmate named Chris reported that once Dedrick punched him just because Chris wouldn’t give Dedrick his pickle at lunch. But a punch was the least of his problems.
On February 29, Dedrick found a loaded gun in his home and decided to bring it to school. During a transition between classes, Dedrick brought out the gun and first pointed it at Chris and then at another classmate, Kayla Rolland. Dedrick had apparently tried to kiss her the day before and she refused, so as he pointed the gun at her he said, “I don’t like you,” and he pulled the trigger. The bullet went through Kayla’s arm and into her body. Later that morning she was pronounced dead.
The whole scene is unimaginable. It’s horrible, and we demand answers in times like these. When these types of killings happen the first thing we hear is politicians from both parties running to open microphones and declaring how guns are or are not to blame for the killing. Rarely in the midst of it all do we ever hear anyone propose a spiritual solution.
I won’t get into the merits of (or lack of merits for) gun control here. I will say that if all we do is focus on gun control, we still won’t solve the problem. If you removed the gun from Dedrick’s situation, it wouldn’t have made things much better. Dedrick and his brother were living in a crack house with an uncle because his father was in prison for violating parole and his mother had recently been evicted. They shared a sofa as their bed, and drugs were constantly present in the house. On the day of the shooting, Dedrick had also brought a knife with him, but that was spotted and confiscated. Removing the gun from the equation might have saved Kayla, but it wouldn’t improve the source of Dedrick’s anger, which undoubtedly was tied to his family and living situation.
Locally, we had a similarly tragic incident when a 13-year-old girl named Tristyn Bailey was stabbed to death, allegedly by a 14-year-old boy from her school. There was no gun involved – just a knife and a boatload of anger and hidden problems. We may well enact gun control, but we’re kidding ourselves if we think that it will get rid of senseless killings and tragedies. That won’t heal the rage and heartache that lead to so many unexplainable events. Those can only be addressed by a change in people’s hearts, and that’s only going to come about with a nationwide spiritual revival. And that’s something that you and I cannot do by ourselves.
Sometimes, all we can do is pray. And that’s enough because God is always there to listen.
Our Father invites us to carry all of our burdens and requests to Him and to share the innermost places of our hearts. Whether our prayers are about concerns we have about our own families or if they’re for the children and families of our nation and the world, we are all called by God to seek His face for the answers. He created everything and everyone, so there’s nothing too small or too big to include in our prayers. He hears – and He cares.
Prayer is a consistent and persistent activity. It should never stop, but it should come from a heart that is thirsty for time alone with the Lord. And we will never be short on things to pray for and about. Mass shootings. Deaths from COVID-19. Building collapses. Earthquakes. This broken world that we live in has constant growing pains that reveal themselves in terrible ways. Just pray in faith for the Lord’s hand in these situations and in the biggest concerns of your life. Then stand on the promises that God has given us in His Word.
Reflection copyright © 2025 Doug DeBolt and Charles Fulton.
