Young boy does what he can to heal his community
As anti-police protests and Black Lives Matter riots continue to sweep across America, one young boy from Oklahoma is doing what he can to heal his community.
7-year-old Trey Elliott felt compelled to pray for local law enforcement after criminal justice reform protests took hold of his home town of Tulsa in June.
But Trey wasn’t praying from home.
After running into a handful of law enforcement officers while with his mother in a local coffee shop, trey took it upon himself to pray over them directly, asking God to bless them and their families.
“Tulsa had a really big peaceful protest on Sunday, and then Sunday night it turned into rioting and businesses being destroyed — busted out windows, things like that in our area,” Trey’s mother, Brittany, told The Western Journal.
“So, Monday I was telling Trey about it because we drive right through that area.”
“I was just kind of explaining it to him and explaining to him what was going on and the difference between protesting and rioting, and what was happening with our police officers,” Trey’s mom added.
“And so he said, ‘I think I’d like to pray for the officers’ … which is a lot coming from him because he does not enjoy praying out loud,” she said.
The following days saw a video of Trey praying over scores more Tulsa Police Department officers.
Trey prayed for our community, police department and me today. It was an honor to meet this young man involved in his own mission to bring our community together. He is that mustard seed planted which yields a tree used by all. @TulsaPolice pic.twitter.com/o2YMoYMKdO
— Tulsa Police Department Chief Franklin (@TPD_Franklin) June 4, 2020
The video soon went viral, prompting officers to seek him out at public events.
Trey later shared similar touching moments with as many as 105 police officers.
Tulsa PD Chief Wendell Franklin tweeted that Trey’s series of loving gestures had a massive impact on the department and officer morale.
“Trey prayed for our community, police department, and me today,” Franklin wrote.
“It was an honor to meet this young man involved in his own mission to bring our community together.”
“He is that mustard seed planted, which yields a tree used by all,” the chief added.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches,” Jesus tells the masses in Matthew 13:31-32.
And that is exactly what his moments of prayer with Tulsa PD illustrate: the way a single servant-hearted act of faith can take root, grow, and spread.
“All he hopes is that other people think to pray for their own officers and their own towns. That’s the whole idea behind Trey’s movement,” Brittany Elliott said.
“Get outside of your own head, get off social media for a little bit and if you see that officer at the coffee shop or at the gas station, just stop and ask them, ‘Would you be OK if I prayed over you?’”
“Because it probably means a lot more to them than you would even think,” she said.