Good Morning Presbytery of Boston,
 
I woke up recently with a heavy heart thinking about all those families experiencing trauma in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. It dawned on me that these stories will be headline news for a little while but then afterwards, we won’t hear much more about the families of those who were suddenly and violently stolen from them.
 
I imagine that the folks in Texas woke up on a Saturday morning, just like we did, and planned to go shopping for school supplies. Maybe they had a full day of activities planned. School shopping, followed by lunch and then off to the movies to see The Lion King. Just a regular day in the life of regular people.
 
But then it all changed in a blink of an eye. Someone decided that some lives are not worth anything and with premeditation shoots “those people” to death. Someone’s mother, someone’s father, someone’s child, someone’s spouse; someone specially and beautifully created in the image and likeness of God.
 
As someone’s aunt who has first-hand knowledge of the devastation which follows a family after gun violence, my heart breaks for these families because their journey will be a long and painful one. The nightmares, the replaying of the suffering of your loved one in your head, the anger, the darkness which blankets your days, months and years, the deep discomfort in your gut, the grief which remains after almost 10 years—this is what they have to look forward to. The resulting pain of gun violence is not newsworthy, so you rarely see what families go through.
 
I also thought about the first-responders. The police, the EMTs, the store personnel, the clergy—and all those who witnessed the bloody debris of human carnage. They will no doubt suffer from PTSD, but those who value guns over lives aren’t interested. These gory scenes might be commonplace on the big screen or during wartime, but one never gets used to seeing something like this at a Walmart or in a school, or in a nightclub, or in a movie theatre, or on a college campus, or in your normally safe neighborhood!
 
But, in case you didn’t realize, we are at war in the United States of America; a war on race, a war on ethnicity, a war on religious affiliation, a war on immigration—a war on “otherness.”
 
I cried out to God this morning—asking, “What can I do? I don’t know what to do, Lord.”
And so, I did what I knew how to do. I prayed, I wrote, and I now share with you.
If you find yourself in a similar position, pray and then talk about it with others you care about. We must talk about these matters because you never know…
 
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Lawson
Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Click here to learn about the PC(USA) stance on gun violence and browse available resources.