Most Holy God, Most Mysterious God,
we dare to approach you and to say in all candor
that you have been a balm and you have been a bother.
You have soothed and healed our troubled hearts;
you have disrupted and upended our complacent lives.
In all things, we give you praise for your wisdom and imagination.
Surely you are working out peace beyond our understanding!
Surely you are working out justice beyond our envisioning!
Until such a time when this world reflects
a divine peace and a holy justice, we pray:
– for children who miss meals and for parents
who tuck hungry kids into bed at night;
– for men and women who work ’round the clock
but are told that their efforts are not enough;
– for those who would wipe the woes of a nation
onto the backs of persons who live in poverty;
– we pray for leaders who count weapons
and barter for power by waging war;
– we pray for local and world leaders who
seek out such power in the pursuit of peace;
– we pray for those who have the shrewdness
to extend grace in unexpected ways.
We name aloud those places and experiences
where our souls cry out for grace to come swiftly:
– the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya;
– nationwide elections in Germany;
– gun violence from the parks of Chicago
to the Navy Yard to our neighborhood streets;
– the legislative hallways in Washington, DC;
– and for grace in those everyday places where
our lives experience joy and pain so intimately:
hospital rooms and schools; the bedside of the dying
and the cribside of the newly-born; church meetings
and Facebook groups and our own kitchen tables;
may these all be places where your love is known.
Now by your faithfulness make us faithful, we pray.
Call us to singular focus and trust in serving you.
We ask for the sake of your will on earth; Amen.