3.17.24 Prayers of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Prayers of Church & Community, March 17, 2024

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Holy God, Eternal Light … creator of the heavens and the earth … your poetry is written

across the evening sky, and inscribed upon our heart … you speak to us quietly and without fanfare … you speak in the tenderness of a child’s smile, their exuberance, and the pleading of their eyes, that we give them a future. You are the unsettling presence that stirs our conscience, you are the soothing mercy that heals the troubled soul. 

Holy God, Eternal Light … we pray for our needs, and those of our loved ones … we give thanks for the good we have done, and we express sorrow for the good we didn’t do … 

We pray, O God, for wisdom … to discern the difference between what is real and what is fantasy … to know falsehood and how it destroys, to know the truth and how it saves … to read the news with careful eyes, to hear the the stories of the day with thoughtful ears … to weigh carefully the claims made, to pray without ceasing, for the counsel of your Holy Spirit.

We give thanks for the likes of King David … his goodness and his achievements … and his honesty when he failed … when he failed those whom he loved, when he failed his nation, when he failed you, O God. 

May the leaders of our world know the boundaries of power … may they be saved from the delusions of status … may the great nations of the world learn the art of restraint, compromise, and doubt - self-doubt, O LORD, an important gift on the road to hope, for nations, and for each of us.

We pray for our YouTube Family - for John and Rose, Marla, Mark, Charles, Anne and Stan - all of them, and more … for their faithfulness, we are grateful, and we pray, O LORD, for their welfare, in mind, body, heart, and soul. 

For our Muslim sisters and brothers, and the Season of Ramadan … 

We pray this day for people of faith throughout our nation … a welter of voices, some claiming special revelation, others just going with the flow … more churchianity than christianity, more form than faith … help us, we pray, to move deeply into the mysteries of our faith, to draw large the circles of concern and purpose, to be more than what we are, to grow and not shrink, to enlarge our cache of wisdom, add to it, enlarge it, give it life, that we might give to the generations to come greatness of courage, breadth of compassion, deeps of serious thinking, and the ethics of justice and peace.

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. 

Is America Weak Internationally?

Is America "weak" internationally?

A friend thinks so.

But I beg to differ.

It goes something like this: America is surely one of the greatest powers in the world today - economically, politically, culturally and militarily. 

That said, it must also be noted: We're not the only power. 

China, the EU, Russia, India and a host of other nations and alliances have their own power and constantly seek their place in the sun as America does. 

While American military moves around the world demonstrate a great deal of power, it's not absolute. No nation posses absolute power, and to suggest that limits on American power is an expression of weakness misconstrues reality. 

Not sure what my friend would want, but I suspect it might be an unrestrained hand militarily … constantly punishing those who would harm us, or threaten us or stand in our way when it comes to national interests.

No nation has ever achieved absolute world dominance, and woe to those who have tried - history makes it clear that such dominance cannot long survive. 

So, while America is incredibly strong and can impress its will upon much of the world, ours is not an absolute strength, and when challenged, we can only, and it's a good thing, enter into negotiations. To some, I know, this appears weak. But in reality, it's the only reality we can ever know. In one way or the other, we have to get along with our neighbors, even those neighbors whom we might love to eliminate.

Victory - What an Odd Word

Just to say a few words ... but what are words?

Strange things, to be sure.

An amalgam of letters, and what are they, but symbols from

Some ancient past.

When folks told stories by campfire.

And in time,

On cave walls, or

Parchment, or 

Vellum,

To become a scroll, a book, a story from the shelf, a

Tall tale of giant sea monsters and

bright stars ... to make children shudder with

Delight ... or shriek with laughter, or

Curl up and go to sleep,

Dreaming of ancient heroes and warriors,

And high waterfalls and wintry mountains,

And ...

Just to say a few words ... but what are words?

In my time, they launch a ship into the sea, and the ship goes off to 

War ... and women and men fight valiantly, for dimly known

Causes ... but for the one at their side. And too many die

For the sake of conquest or victory, and talk about strange word?

What does victory mean?

When standing in a pool of blood?

With death all around?

In the midst of our constant, unyielding, mortality?

Is it immortality that we desire?

In the death of others, we might add more time to our failing candle?

Is it power that delights us?

Our testosterone-driven stories?

Victory! What an odd word!