A note from this week’s writer: These aren’t the prayers I woke up thinking I would write this week. These aren’t even the prayers I particularly want to pray. But maybe – just maybe – after the U.S. government today proved it only cares about making the richest even richer and more powerful at the expense of those who have the least, these are the prayers I need to hear today. The prayers I need to be reminded that You, Oh God, are already praying for and within us. The prayers that remind us that even in our deepest fury and betrayal and fear, You are already bringing good out of evil, love out of hate, restoration out of rejection. Grace out of doom. And for those of you who come to these prayers each week looking for a list of international news – tonight I can’t. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. All I can do is let my own tangled anguish and trust in God’s mercy become a litany for all nations, all persons, all creation.
Watch over your children, O Lord,
as their days increase;
bless and guide them wherever they may be.
Strengthen them when they stand;
comfort them when discouraged or sorrowful;
raise them up if they fall;
and in their hearts may thy peace
which passeth understanding
abide all the days of their lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
–Birthday blessing from The Episcopal Church (U.S.) Book of Common Prayer
Watch over your children, O Lord, and all our nations, as their days increase. For every human being is one of your children, and every nation is formed of and for those you love. Watch over your children and all who govern or hold power over them, for each day is a day born in your presence, a turning point, a chance to continue what is good, a chance to restore that which is lost, a chance to turn again where we have gone astray.
Watch over us, O Lord.
Bless and guide us wherever we may be. In war and turmoil, strident in our cries for justice, demanding in our tantrums to have it all our own way; hungry, hurting, grieving; at work or at rest; in prison or free. Clawing back imagined glories from history that never existed, naming the promises that have never been met, holding to the dream of the future. At the beginning of life, or nearing its ending, as nations start or fail, still – always – you are with us.
Bless and guide us, O Lord.
Strengthen us when we stand. When we walk, and sing, and write, and email, and pray. When we create and when we tear down. When we love, and nurture, feed and heal. When we touch one another. When we listen and see and know that every heart is your heart. When we are afraid to live and more afraid to die. When we just want to be left alone, to live in our “normal” lives. When we are afraid that responding with all the depths of your love will tear our lives apart – and that not responding will destroy our souls.
Strengthen us, O Lord.
Comfort us when discouraged or sorrowful. When those who think causing pain is funny reign over the nations. When what we have built over decades and more is destroyed at a dictator’s whim. When mercy is treated as weakness. When the powerful trample on the poor, the immigrant, the elderly, the disabled. When governments restrict hard-won civil rights. When even speaking one’s mind becomes dangerous. When we see evil in the world and begin to doubt that you exist, that believing in you has any power or meaning at all.
Comfort us, O Lord.
Raise us up if we fall. Raise us up if we succomb to the lure of closing our eyes to what is happening around us. Raise us up if we fall into the temptation to return evil for evil, retribution instead of restoration. Raise us up if we forget that to be yours means to love our enemies. To want them, yes, to realize and be horrified by the evil they have done – and yet in the same moment to know your forgiveness, to want to become part of extending forgiveness and building bridges of compassion throughout the whole world. Raise us up if we fall into despair.
Raise us up, O Lord.
And in our hearts may thy peace which passeth understanding abide all the days of our lives. Always and everywhere, in every nation, in every heart, Always, and always, and always. For you, and your peace, and strength, and guidance, and courage, and comfort are already always there. Always.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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