God, it’s hard to be grateful. I remember a book, “Praise God Anyway,” and I hated the idea. Yet You, Holy God, have allowed me to live enough to know the author was right. I must try to be grateful anyway.
Holy and Loving God, we come to this season of Thanksgiving wanting to:
“Count our Blessings,
Name them one by one,
Count our many Blessings
See what God hath done.”
The hymn writer was as right as the book author. We are challenged to be grateful; we are invited to be grateful.
We need to be grateful. We live in a world of horrors, but perhaps it is an amusement park’s Hall of Mirrors, with reality warped into something that is not so. Goodness is warped into evil. Love is warped into hate. Religion is warped into violence. Hope is warped into despair. Faith is warped into oppression. Yet You, Holy God, You have taught us that “faith, hope and love abide” despite all the evils of our world, and that “the greatest of those is love.”
And so we choose to be grateful, confident that Your love can transform even the worst into something good.
At this very moment, we send Your transforming love into the worst of Ebola sickness, into the worst of Middle East madness, into the worst of our own sorrows and sins.
We confess to a world of persistent wrongs with anti-Semitism, racism, and poverty; and of willful religious violence. In this act of prayer we choose sides with You, O God. Accept us into your kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” In gratitude and humility we pray…. Amen.
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