Pastor Prays for Healing in Tucson
Pastor Rod Hugen is asking God to care for all of those involved in, as well as to bring some good out of, the shooting rampage that left six dead and 14 wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democract, outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday.
Hugen is the Christian Reformed Church pastor of a church he planted in Tucson. Although he wasn’t friends with the congresswoman, he knew her and had prayed before and after some of the functions that she had attended.
Hugen asks for prayer and writes about Giffords, who is in stable condition after brain surgery, in a blog column that appears on the Back to God Ministry International's web page called "Think Christian." BTGMI is the electronic media ministry of the CRC.
"I've spent time with Gabrielle Giffords. We were not friends or hardly even acquaintances, but on several occasions we shared a dais or a banquet table when she was the featured speaker, and I was asked to do an invocation or a closing prayer at a high school graduation or some other such event. I found her to be warm and kind and someone who was easy to talk to," Hugen writes.
Jared Lee Loughner, 22, was charged in court on Monday with attempting to assassinate Giffords. He also will be charge for killing and wounding the others.
"The pain is palpable here in Tucson. As in all tragedies, the talking heads and newspaper writers try to explain the inexplicable," writes Hugen. "So many tears flow. So much pain oozes from every pore. Somehow, we must find an explanation."
Hugen writes that he prays for Tucson to "learn to love what is good and to hate what is evil."
As he has driven the streets of the city and reflected on the tragedy, he has also prayed:
"Please, God, hold close all those so devastated by this awful moment. Touch, also, all those whose tragedies didn’t make the national headlines. Please, I beg you, draw this city to yourself so that on that great day we will gladly bow before you when we will forever know the goodness that lies beyond this present suffering. Work in me what you must so that I would be useful to you in this, your great work."
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To read Hugen's entire blog, visit: Arizona shootings.
