Prayer to Love Our Neighbors as Ourselves – August 4, 2019

God, yesterday in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas there was another one of over 30 mass shootings in America this year. The shooter brandished an automatic weapon powered by bullets and hatred for immigrants.

When I was in my 8th grade class at Dean Junior High, our English teacher had us read an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson on The Melting Pot. Our teacher, Mrs. Sauers, said the significance of the essay was the role diversity has played in our great land.

I, the one who is writing this prayer, and those who read it are most likely descendants of immigrants, which America took into its arms. By so doing in the past, America in the present is one of the greatest nations on Earth. A country that nurtures the gifts You have given Your children. A democracy that strives to provide prosperity and security to its citizens.

God, please guide us in prayer with our struggles to balance our need to take care for our own and our duty to be a safe haven for others in despair; our need to be safe and secure against our Constitutional right to bear arms; and to have laws which protect us against hatred and violence and which also support the ideals of liberty our Forefathers envisioned.
God, please have Your angels spread their wings around those who have died in El Paso.

May Your angels cast Your healing light on those who were injured and in pain.

Lord, yesterday 20 of Your children shopped at Walmart doing what we all do on normal days to feed and clothe loved ones.

Instead of checking out of Walmart, they checked into Heaven.

Lord, help us love others as we love ourselves.

Heaven waits for all Your children.

But, love can’t wait. Amen.

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Jack H. Emmott is a Senior Counsel of Gray, Reed & McGraw, LLP, a 120-lawyer full service firm in Houston, Texas, a Board-Certified Family Law and Master Credentialed Collaborative Law Professional Divorce Attorney, Mediator, Author, Entrepreneur and Inspirational Speaker. For more information about Jack or his latest book, Bending Angels: Living Messengers of God’s Love, go to the Bending Angel website.