Prayer As A Wepon

“I pray that you exercise the demons in this man and take him out of his homosexual lifestyle.” A man from Louisiana College said has he laid his hand on my back during our candlelight vigil out side LC. It was in that moment I lost all my silent reserve and started to cry. Let me rewind.

We pulled into the Pineville LA area that afternoon and spent the packing boxes for he CENLA Food Bank. For me it was awesome to work for the community for a little while. Pineville and Alexandria LA were hit by Hurricane Gustav so we as Riders decided to go to campus which was also effected we would do community service and invite students out. The President of the university told Katie that “They were not interested in that kind of work.” The President of a Christan university was not interested in helping out his own community. We worked anyway and put together so many boxes. Over 250 boxes of food in 4 hours.

We then decided after the President's remarks we would hold a candlelight vigil that night and bring attention to what he had said. When we got there there students lined up, behind police officers, watching. Laughing. Slowly the vigil line got larger and larger due the community members there. We even had a faculty member there. We had students walking up and down the line behind us, praying for us, our souls, our so called 'demons'. After they were done and we had collected ourselves we invited the students to come speak with us. When they would not we started to tell about us and the similarities between us. No one came to speak. The silence was louder than any vigil song ever could have been.

To have prayer, something that is so sacred and meaningful used as a weapon was the hardest thing for me as a Christan to handle. It's something I will never understand.

From The Road And Shaken,

Zak Rittenhouse