So broken, so torn, so angry and confused.
These men are human, just like me and you, full of anguish
from their pasts and hardened by fear and bitterness. Yet drawn together in
unity. Searching for love and acceptance. For family. These men, even boys, are
searching for love and they’ve found it in the gangs. And if that’s the only
place they’ve found it, I cry harder. Where is the body of Christ that embodies
love, that exemplifies acceptance, that showers a grace that leads to repentance.
Where are their families? Their teachers? Their friends? Who inspires them to
make the world a better place? Oh how different it would be if those were
present, but the reality is that our world is broken, and much of what should
be is absent. Jesus, my heart cries out. It breaks. It longs to give them a way
out. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The dozens of people
killed, the gallons of innocent blood spilled. All in the name of the gang. The
violence is overwhelming and I pray for their families, of both the victim and
the killer. I pray for both the destroyed and the destroyer. For what’s truly
at work is the Destroyer. Driving them to this madness. But do they know
anything else? Do they even have the possibility to make it out alive? I don’t
pretend to know, to understand, what drives people to gangs, how they work, or
the frame of mind they operate in, but I do know this. It’s darkness. And under
that blanket of darkness lies A deep and desperate child, defenceless and
damned by everyone around.
Where is the ground? The firm foundation? The light that
brings restoration? God I know you can. I know you are so powerful that you can
even change the darkest heart of stone. Your grace has the power to flow and
wash away the black dirt to reveal the frightened flesh beneath. You have the
power to heal. To bring even the fiercest leader of a gang to his knees. And I
pray for that. For your glory to be shown in that. That the worst of sinners
drowns in your grace and love and acceptance and the radical change is inexplicable.
Being lifted out of the hell he lives in and into your marvellous light. In Jesus
name, I know it’s possible, so I pray that it becomes a reality.
