Prayer For My Children

Album: Soul Of Ferguson (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • St. Louis soul singer Brian Owens wrote this heartfelt plea after the 2014 death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. He spoke of the song in a 2017 Songfacts interview: "How do I explain all this to my children? That's basically what 'Prayer for My Children' is. It's a prayer, but it's also an explanation to them of expectation and letting them know, 'This is your dad's worldview on what's going on. This is how I pray you will come to see the world you interact in.'"

    Owens advice to his children is to stay rooted in their faith. "My favorite line in that song is, 'Color and country don't define or make you who you are. God's love is the only thing that sets each one of us apart and binds us together.' We're all uniquely made. We're all created uniquely but at the same time we share so much in the fact that we were created by God. It's not too heavy but it's like our wrapping paper is our wrapping paper, but we all have a soul and a spirit and a mind and we have more similarities than we do differences."
  • This was originally written as a suite that contained two more songs.

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