by Stephen W. Smith
In this week of violence, where ten people buying groceries are murdered; where nineteen children are massacred in a school class room; where Taiwanese Christians are attacked while gathering to worship—what can we say? These events happened in only the last seven days.
In a time where we are divided and separated by politics and news—what can we say?
In a time where some of us are in personal health crisis not knowing the future or even the present—what can we say?
In this time where our private pain is so often masked by the tyranny of the urgent, that we just quit sharing our inner world because the outer world is changing every single day.
In a time of social media domination where it seems too long and cumbersome, we respond to a “friends” confessed need and we find ourselves simply and quickly writing to respond: “Thoughts and Prayers.”
If I am honest, that kind of simplistic response would have tripped me up and trigger something in me which said, “Can you do better than that? Can’t you take the time to express something more than ‘Thoughts and prayers?’”
I still refrain from sharing the jugular of my own plight because I just don’t have the energy to wade through such elementary platitudes.
As We Change—we can change how we say things!
I am changing and invite you to change with me.
Aren’t we in a time where words fail?
Aren’t we in a time where we don’t know what to say anymore?
When nineteen children awoke to go to school, kiss their mama’s goodbye and enter the safe place of learning—what do we really say when we read the headlines?
What do we really say when ten people went to buy Cheerios and eggs and shed their own blood at the stocked shelves?
A Quiet Revolution Has a Beginning in Thought
Thoughts and prayers may just be the beginning of a quiet revolution. Thoughts and prayers may be the fodder for the fire to burn the dross of violence down. Thoughts and prayers becomes the seed to say three essential and necessary things:
I see you.
I hear you.
I care.
And I would add a fourth: Lord, have mercy.
To say “Thoughts and prayers” we are acknowledging that we see our friends; see the other school children who survived by hiding under desks and behind closed doors. We see our friends awaiting diagnosis from medical tests. We see our relatives that feel so invisible that they resign themselves to the cynical resignation that no one cares, no one gives a dam.
To say “Thoughts and prayers,” we are acknowledging that their cries for help; their groans of suffering; their moans of lamenting are now our own cries, our own suffering, and our own lamenting. To say “Thoughts and prayers” is to tell the Ukrainian people that our groans, which are too deep for words, are our guttural response at what we see and what we see on the news.
Sometimes, let’s face it, all we can muster up is three monosyllable words which contain so much more than three words: “Thoughts and prayers.”
We are saying : This has GOT to change!
Thoughts and prayers is perhaps the beginning of a forming in our own hearts, which says: this has just got to change! How long can we tolerate the inaction of politicians and lawmakers to protect us from ourselves?
Any idea begins with thought, and it is in thought where we ponder like Mary, the mother of Jesus, did about the unbelievable happening in her and around her. Perhaps her thoughts and pondering shaped her own soul to endure the rugged road ahead of seeing her on son as different, unique, celebrated, and then murdered. Mary’s own thoughts fostered deep prayers, I’m thinking.
When God created the universe, don’t you think God first ‘thought’ it up; thought us up; thought up the nineteen children and the ten in the grocery store? It’s not random is it? How could such beauty be random and accidental? Creation begins with thought and is birthed through some kind of guttural prayer which simply asks for ‘help.’
To say, “thoughts and prayers” is to care. It is to care more than to just scroll down to friends having their best life now while the world is crumbling, shifting, and changing at warp speed. To at least say “thoughts and prayers” is to enter into the greater conversation rather than stay on the side line and remain neutral and unaffected.
The word for “care” in Latin comes from the word “cure.” To care is to cure. To care is to address the gaping wound which says, “No one cares. I am in this alone.” To show care is to aid in the curing of the deep abyss that swallows many souls today. When we extend “care” we are actually helping the cure.
To say, “Thoughts and prayers” means that I am in the fight with you. It means you are not alone. It means we are together in suffering and united in the fight to not only survive, but to thrive.
These three words mean so much more than we have acknowledged. To say these three words is to convey love. And in the end, is there anything on the face of the planet that any suffering person needs more than love?
Thoughts and Prayers!
Lord, have mercy!