Oh Lord – he’s 10.
He’s 10 with a broken brain.
Can you mend a 10 year old broken brain?
Of course you can. I know that. But will you?
Would you?
Oh Lord he’s 10.
Or 11.
Maybe he was 10 when he did it and 11 now.
But his brain got broken a long time ago.
This doesn’t just ‘happen’
Are you in the business of mending broken brains?
Sometimes I don’t think so.
But what if that’s because we only see the ones that didn’t get mended.
– or haven’t yet.
What if you’ve mended more brains that we could ever know
Because we haven’t seen the effects of the brokenness?
Oh Lord, he’s 10. Or 11.
Does it even matter?
You Who dwells outside of our now – do you see the man he ‘is’ in a simple pivot of the line of time? Is he a monster? Is he fixable?
Oh Lord – a broken boy.
Please God might you mend him?
Might you put your people around him to help him heal?
Would you protect others in the now, and in the future, from the spread of this specific sadness?
Would you?
Oh Lord he’s 10.
So many fearful others, so sure of the ‘should haves’.
And would I be too in their position?
Oh Lord – the other broken boy.
Heal, protect, love, tear down, build up, surround and restore.
How long oh Lord.
How long.
He’s 8.
Oh Lord.
Written after one boy abused another at a local school.