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“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 Dedrick once punched him simply because Chris wouldn’t give him his pickle at lunch. But a punch was the least of his problems.
On February 29, Dedrick found a loaded gun in the home where he was staying 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 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 when something like this happens, we demand answers. Almost immediately, our political camps retreat to familiar positions. One side points to the gun and calls for greater restrictions. The other side points to the person holding the gun and warns against blaming the weapon. Those may be legitimate public-policy debates, but neither one reaches the deepest question.
What has happened inside a human heart that makes violence seem like the answer?
I won’t get into the merits or lack of merits of gun control here because that’s not really the point. Certainly, if Dedrick had never had access to that gun, Kayla Rolland might still be alive. Keeping a loaded firearm out of the hands of a six-year-old is hardly controversial. But removing the gun would not have fixed what was happening in Dedrick’s life.
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 it was spotted and confiscated. Taking away the gun might have prevented that particular tragedy, but it would not have healed the anger, instability, neglect, and brokenness surrounding a six-year-old child.
Locally, we saw another horrifying example when 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey was stabbed to death by 14-year-old Aiden Fucci. Fucci later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. There was no gun involved. The weapon was a knife.
That’s the larger problem. Violence does not require a particular weapon. Guns, knives, bombs, vehicles, fists — once hatred, anger, vengeance, despair, or evil has taken root deeply enough, human beings have shown a horrifying ability to find a means of hurting one another.
We can pass laws. We can debate policy. Police can restrain evil. Courts can punish it. Schools and families can intervene before violence occurs, and all of those things matter. But none of them can transform the human heart.
That’s where the problem becomes spiritual.
What our nation desperately needs isn’t merely a better argument about weapons. We need changed hearts. We need people who understand that another person’s life is sacred because that person was created by God. We need people who respond to anger with grace, hatred with love, grievance with forgiveness, and despair with hope. Ultimately, that kind of change doesn’t come from legislation. It comes through Jesus Christ.
And when transformed hearts begin multiplying across families, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and communities, that’s what revival begins to look like.
But you and I can’t manufacture revival. We can’t personally repair the soul of a nation. We can’t reach into the heart of every angry, broken, frightened, or hateful person and change what is happening there.
So what do we do?
Jesus tells us where to begin.
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”
There is something almost jarring about that instruction in a world where every tragedy immediately sends people toward microphones, television cameras, social media, and political arguments. Everybody has something to say. Everybody has someone to blame.
Jesus tells His followers to shut the door.
Go somewhere nobody is watching. Get alone with your Father. Bring Him the things you cannot understand and the problems you cannot solve.
And then Jesus teaches us how to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done.”
Maybe we have repeated those words so many times that we forget how radical they are. In a world filled with violence, hatred, broken families, frightened children, war, sickness, grief, and death, we are asking God for His kingdom to break into all of it. We are asking for His will to replace ours. We are asking Him to change hearts that we cannot change ourselves.
Sometimes, prayer really is the only thing left for us to do. But that does not mean prayer is the least important thing we can do.
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 concern our own families or the children and families of our nation and the world, God calls us to seek His face. He created everything and everyone, so there is nothing too small or too large to bring before Him.
He hears. He cares. And He can do what we cannot.
Prayer should be consistent and persistent. It should never stop, and it should come from a heart thirsty for time alone with the Lord. We will never be short of things to pray about. Wars. Shootings. Natural disasters. Broken homes. Frightened children. Sickness. Grief. This broken world continually reminds us how desperately we need God.
There are problems too big for us to solve.
There are no problems too big for us to pray about.
So go into that quiet place. Shut the door. Pray in faith for the Lord’s hand in the greatest concerns of this world and in the greatest concerns of your own life.
Then stand on the promises God has given us in His Word.
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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt and Charles Fulton.
