2,125 people have died of an overdose in Massachusetts over the course of the past year. On Saturday, August 31, 2024, at 6pm, Pastor Jacob participated in the Overdose Awareness Vigil organized by the SAFE Coalition on the Franklin Town Common. You can find a full audio recording of the event on Franklin Matters. As part of his remarks, Pastor Jacob offered the following prayer:
O my God!
2,125 people
dead from overdose in the last year!
O my God!
Too many lives cut short.
O my God!
The words left unspoken.
The dreams that will never be realized.
O my God!
The collateral damage
–the harm,
the trauma of families and friends left behind,
the frustration,
the regret,
the grief—
we suffer.
O my God!
We grieve the names we know
and the many more we don’t.
We share a tear with all who mourn.
O my God!
“No mortal life you have made is without eternal meaning.
No earthly fate is beyond your redeeming”1
Come among us.
Comfort us.
Wipe every tear from our eyes.
Give us hope.
O my God!
“Hold us in your keeping…
Save our minds from despair and our hearts from fear.
And guard and guide us with your peace” 2
O my God,
to you we pray. Amen.
Pastor Jacob’s prayer was written with the following passages in mind: Lamentations 3:21, John 1:1-4, John 11:35, 1 Peter 1:3-5, Revelations 21:4.
1 from a prayer “For An Untimely or Tragic Death,” in The United Methodist Book of Worship, p163.
2 Ibid., p164.