As racially charged protests and riots continued to rock the nation last week in light of the officer-involved death of George Floyd, one Oklahoma boy was hard at work helping to calm hearts and minds in his community.
Exposed to the turbulent nature of the current social climate when criminal justice reform protests took a turn for the destructive in his home town of Tulsa on June 1, 7-year-old Trey Elliott felt compelled to pray for local law enforcement.
A brief personal or family prayer from home, however, was not the extent of what Trey would do, though.
Instead, running into a handful of law enforcement officers that same day at a local coffee shop with his mother, Trey decided to stop and pray over them directly, petitioning God to bless them, their families and the surrounding community with protection and healing.
“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 in an interview. “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.
“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.
In the days that followed, photographs and video of Trey praying over scores more Tulsa Police Department officers would go viral on social media, leading officers to seek him out at public events and even at home.
As of Wednesday, the young prayer warrior had shared similar touching moments of faith with as many as 105 law enforcement officers, his mother told The Western Journal.
