Kyrie eleison ....

"This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them." -- Isaiah 37:3 (New International Version)

Saturday, while on the computer, my phone alerted me to a shooting in El Paso, Texas.  Twenty people died.

And then, shortly after I arrived at church yesterday, I learned of the shooting in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people are dead.

I spoke briefly to my preacher and told him I'd just heard of that shooting; he said he already knew (and at the beginning of his sermon, he asked one of the elders to pray, and he also acknowledged that it had been a hard week in our country.)

All my sorrow, all my sadness, all my frustration over yet another shooting just exploded into two words, one phrase:

Kyrie eleison.

The first song our praise team sang yesterday was "Shout Hallelujah," and although I sang with them and worshiped with them, all I could think was, this is not a time to shout hallelujah.

(That above comment is not intended as a slam on our praise team.  I sing on our praise team approximately once a month, and I know the work that goes into practicing and singing.  And they had no way of knowing that there would be two mass shootings in less than 24 hours.)

"Kyrie eleison," as I just used it, is not a reference to the wonderfully upbeat Mr. Mister song of 1986.  Rather, it is Greek for "Lord, have mercy."  It's an ancient prayer dating back to the early days of the Orthodox and Catholic Church.  There are places in the Gospels where people cry out, "Lord, have mercy on me."  The Canaanite woman with a demon-possessed daughter cried out for the Lord to have mercy on her.  Many others cried out for mercy as well.

Lord, have mercy indeed.

This Wikipedia article lists 256 mass shootings in 2019 alone, with 283 dead and 1,057 wounded.  I am not exactly clear on the definition they are using as "mass shooting", so I am going to cut and paste the paragraph the article used when talking about the definition of "mass shooting":

There are many definitions of a mass shooting. Listed roughly from broad to specific:

Stanford University MSA Data Project: 3+ shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time, excluding organized crime, as well as gang-related and drug-related shootings.^[8]

Mass Shooting Tracker: 4+ shot in one incident, at one location, at roughly the same time.^[7]

Gun Violence Archive/Vox: 4+ shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time.^[4][9]

Mother Jones: 3+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at a public place.^[6]

The Washington Post: 4+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at a public place.^[5]

ABC News/FBI: 4+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time.^[10]

Congressional Research Service: 4+ shot and killed in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at a public place, excluding gang-related killings and those done with a profit-motive.^[2]

Only incidents considered mass shootings by at least two of the above sources are listed.  

No matter how you define a "mass shooting", one is too many.

Already the screaming, blaming, and finger-pointing has started.  The usual suspects are being blamed:  too many guns, lax laws, mental illness, etc. etc.  And "white supremacy" as a cause is also raising its ugly, deformed head, mainly because of a manifesto left by the El Paso shooter which stated that "this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas".  The El Paso shooting is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and as a possible hate crime.  In the case of the Dayton shooting, the suspect was taken down in less than a minute after the first shots were fired -- and he still murdered nine people, including his own sister, and injured at least 27 others. There's no known "hate crime" motive in the Dayton shooting as I write this.

Lord, have mercy.

If the usual pattern holds, people will scream at each other on social media, post hashtags, and demand action, and nothing will happen.  And then the next mass shooting will happen and the cycle will begin all over again.  Over and over, lather, rinse, repeat.

This 1987 song by Richard Marx has a line that sums up our current situation well:

Lord have mercy
For we know not what we do
Lord have mercy
We've forgotten to be afraid of you.

I recently read where Donald Trump kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign "in the name of Jesus Christ."  If Donald Trump is really serious about invoking the name of Jesus in his campaign for president, he will call for a national day of prayer and repentance, starting with his own sins.  

This is not the time for finger-pointing, screaming, hashtagging, or anything else, for that matter.  This isn't even the time to shout hallelujah (as appropriate as that is at other times.) 
This is a time of distress.
This is a time of rebuke.
This is a time of disgrace.
This is a time to lament, to fall flat on our faces before the living God and just simply cry out, "Kyrie eleison."

Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison
Kyrie eleison . . .

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.