With grateful hearts, O God, we gather together … here in this place of hope and peace, and across the digital world - bound together in the great fellowship of Christ.
Here and everywhere, O God, your presence beckons and confirms, invites and ordains, calls and sends … your living, vital, presence, O God, gives life to the world … and with joy, dear God, we greet you in this day of national celebration, praying for our nation’s wellbeing, that more of what we could be, will become all the more, and what we are, more often than we can admit, will become less.
Holy God, we’re mindful of the dead in San Antonio - mothers and fathers, daughters and sons - people seeking a better life, trying their best … dead in the heat of a Texas summer.
The dead are safe in your everlasting arms, O God, but may their memory haunt us, may their plight compel us, may their dreams lead us, to wiser policies and a richer kindness. The very word, immigrant, dear God, has been vilified and used to inflame and infuriate. Help us, we pray, to move beyond such childish behavior, to achieve a more human, and more humane, way of seeing life around us. Not in fear, but in faith, O God … not with anger, but with understanding … not with smallness of mind, but with stillness of heart - to love and to welcome … to share what we have, knowing full well, dear God, that in the sharing of life, life, and more life, accrues.
Holy God, we celebrate our nation’s story today - a story of goodness and hope, AND a story of greed and violence … we tell both stories, O God - because your truth demands of us the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We will not shy away from the details, holy God, nor shirk our duties to build the better day.
Give us, we pray, leaders strong in character and conviction, generous of mind and heart, morally sound and spiritually grounded, faithful to the oath of office, knowing the difference between right and wrong.
Bless our nation with your love … guide each of us, we pray, to be loyal to Christ and faithful to our nation.
In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ who taught us to pray, saying:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment