Choosing Love Over Rage: A Healing Prayer from Atrocities Against Children

I try to sit still.

I try to be calm,

but I cannot.

In the silence, I think of them,

children crying,

hungry,

abused,

forgotten,

hated,

deeply unloved.

I wonder if these voices are real

or stitched together from stories,

things I have read,

heard,

absorbed through others,

or whispers placed by the architect of evil.

They cannot be real.

And yet they feel real.

Each time I hear these stories,

the weight grows heavier.

The darkness moves closer.

And something inside me ignites.

Rage.

A deep and violent rage

that rises so quickly

it frightens me.

I feel it in my chest,

the urge to strike back,

to destroy what destroys them

with equal force.

And I ask,

whether it is my own voice

or something deeper within me.

Is this right?

Is it right to feel this way,

to want harm for those who harm the powerless,

the innocent,

the pure,

the little children?

Do I hate evil so much

that I would become violent to stop it?

Or is this only anger

wearing the mask of justice?

What is it in a person

that allows them to harm a child?

What fractures the mind and soul so deeply

that innocence becomes a target?

Was it done to them first,

by a relative,

a religious leader,

a teacher,

someone trusted?

How does something so pure,

so full of future,

so filled with the hope of God,

become an object of cruelty?

I try to understand it,

but I resist.

Because to understand

feels too close to excusing.

And I will not excuse it.

It feels beyond reason,

a distortion,

a corruption,

something carefully shaped

for the depraved,

something that carries the weight of Satan itself.

And if evil uses violence,

I ask,

Can violence be used against it?

Would destroying the perpetrators

end the darkness?

The Spirit tells me no.

Because it would return.

Darkness always returns

in a fallen world.

We are broken.

We are capable of terrible things,

even when we know better.

So, the question changes.

Not,

“Should I destroy evil?”

But,

“What do I do with the rage inside of me?”

Because I cannot fix the world alone.

I am not the answer.

And yet the rage remains,

Burning,

directed at those who destroy

what is most fragile.

So I then ask,

Why does my rage rise so easily,

yet my love does not?

Why does anger feel powerful,

while love feels distant?

What would it look like

if love rose to the same height as rage?

If I fought darkness

not with destruction,

but with something greater?

What if my rage became compassion,

became action,

became something that heals

instead of multiplying harm?

Because if I answer evil with hatred,

am I not feeding it?

Am I not becoming

what I claim to oppose?

I am not the judge.

I am called to love.

Even when that feels impossible.

Even when I do not understand how.

So I pray,

Abba, take this rage from me,

or reshape it, please.

Do not let it become violence.

Do not let it become hatred.

Let it become something useful.

Teach me to act without destroying.

Teach me to care without hardening.

Help me love not the actions,

but the people

even those I struggle to understand.

Help me believe

that change is possible,

even when I doubt it.

Guide me into something real,

to help those who have been hurt,

to break the cycle

before it repeats again.

Make me someone who builds,

not someone who only reacts.

Let me hate what is evil,

but never forget

that a person is more

than their worst act.

Teach me the difference.

Teach me restraint.

Teach me mercy.

Teach me strength that does not destroy.

Teach me to love

in a world

that makes love feel impossible.

Help me love even those

I find hardest to face,

those who harm the innocent.

Protect me from the pull of rage,

from the illusion of power within it.

And replace this rage of violence

with a rage for love.

I so hate these evil actions, Abba.

Your son,

C