The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. – Psalm 121:8
God of Memory, hear our prayers, Hear our prayer among the dailiness of our lives wherever we make our home on this earth, wherever we walk our dogs, tend our gardens, scrub our pots and pans, read our books, receive our guests, pay our bills, and look for the moon each night.
We look back on these actions and give thanks for the memories that we are making, even when we may not realize it. When we pay attention to the steadiness of these gifts, sometimes it feels like the rhythm of these common tasks is what saves us.
O God, bless the good memories that stay with us a lifetime, sometimes visiting us decades after we first encountered them. A song has that kind of power for most people. For others, so does a poem. Or a quilt with stories told through familiar patches. We remember when we first saw the Statue of Liberty and that it looked just the same as its pictures — and when we stayed up late to see Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. Bless Charlie Brown’s wisdom and apple pie that tastes just like we remembered it and unmistakable voices singing “Happy Birthday” on the phone, at midnight, and an old suitcase full of old black and white photographs — and memories. God, we pray everyone has a collection of good memories to soften the hard times and bring extra delight to life!
Hear our prayers that we utter so quickly. They surface above, within, and among the news stories that sometimes catch in our ears or on our screens. Often we don’t seem to be able to let them go. A powerful, unwelcome memory may take up too much space within us.
O God of Memory, we stand this week among days that call to mind events that we remember so clearly, no matter where we were when the events happened, for the news made us feel like we were bearing witness once again to the bad on the screen.
Last week we heard memories from those who experienced Hurricane Katrina and saw camera footage of people trying to rescue others from rooftops and the Gulf waters in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Those memories are from twenty years ago, but still we say: Lord, have mercy. And for those who have lived since that time through typhoons off the coast of Thailand and Japan and floods in India and Pakistan and North Carolina (U. S. A.), and so many other places on our globe, Lord, have mercy on those lands and peoples.
From our experience during the past twenty-four years, we feel certain that we will always remember where we were when we first learned about the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the flight in Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2001. We are two decades older, and the world, in many corners, is still reeling from those early morning memories, but though we are still beginners at watching this kind of pain, we don’t want any more lessons, God. Still we say, Lord, have mercy.
And Lord, we have grieved this week along with the people of the community of Ascension Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, who are each bound to the others through the griefs surrounding the deaths of Harper and Fletcher, two of the students at the school, and through your love, holding us all. The senseless horror of shooting children reminds us of memories we do not want to admit still happen throughout the world, especially to the most innocent among us. The long litany of the sites of these tragedies bring back painful memories in us, including Uvalde, Columbine, Parkland, and Sandy Hook and many more in the United States, but also in countless schools throughout the world, including Dreierschützengasse secondary school in Graz, Austria; the Professor Raul Brasil State School in Suzano, Brazil; School No. 88 in Izhevsk, Udmurtia, Russia; Campus Risbergska in Örebro, Sweden. Many of us remember times when we didn’t have these memories. And in our safety plans for churches and schools we ask, how can we preserve the good gifts of childhood? How can we ensure they have good memories? We can’t without your help. God, we bring our fears to you. Lord, have mercy.
O God, on August 6, just a month ago this Sunday, we remembered the 80 th anniversary of the American bombs falling on Hiroshima, Japan, killing between 80,000 to 140,000 people and seriously injuring 100,000 more. Three days later, remembrances were held in Nagasaki, Japan, marking the 80 th anniversary of the bombing of the city when 70,000 to 80,000 people were killed, just days before the end of the war. Now, at a time when the average age of survivors of the bombings is 86 years old, we cry for your mercy on the memories they have carried for as long as they can remember. We honor these global citizens as they yearn for the abolition of nuclear wars and for their dream of everlasting world peace. Lord, have mercy on the peacemakers.
God of deepest mercy, on the other side of the world, where so many people remember the horror of the concentration camps in Germany, in Poland, in Austria, in the Czech Republic, and a multitude of other countries during World War II. The stories that have been embedded in their memories have been passed to the generations after them, so we will never forget. Lord, in your mercy, may we remember.
We remember those who lived in Palestine, who, through the memories of their ancestors, grieve the story of the Nakba, marking the beginning of the destruction of the Palestinian homeland, and the mass displacement in 1948 of the majority of the Palestinian population. Lord, in your mercy, may we remember. Hear our prayers.
God of memory, help us remember those the world may forget. This week we learned about a village of 1,000 people in western Sudan that disappeared under a landslide and about the earthquake in Afghanistan that killed 600 people and injured 1300 more. Lord, have mercy on the souls of these who lost their lives.
Light of the world, please shine your light into these dark places and heal the broken hearts of those who have horrific memories from which they can’t escape. Comforting presence, soften these memories of pain, struggle, and regret. Every time one of your children comes face to face with these scars, give them life in your Light.
God, many of us have memories that reflect those of our world community. Many places and dates are seared in our memory. We remember where we were when we heard of the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Princess Diana.
God, you give us the good gift of healing memories, reminding us that people can lean into good dreams for the world. We remember when Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany, and demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” . . . and when Nelson Mandela was released after twenty-seven years in prison. After helping negotiate an end to apartheid, he became South Africa’s first democratically elected Black president. . . . We remember when the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, and the first vaccination was administered on December 14, 2020. For world events in which people show your just mercy, thanks be to God.
God, be with us in the faithful daily actions we remember to take in our homes that may be known only to us. And may we remember, too, that we are part of the community of people who help create arcs as wide as the latitude and longitude lines of the globe.
O God, Good Shepherd of the memories deep within our souls and those we are creating each day, help us think through our lives with a prayerful spirit. May we call to mind the deeds of the Lord as we move through both the sad and joyful times. Strengthen the memories that heal us, teach us, and restore our souls. Help each of us remember how to live with a shepherd’s spirit, tending to those beside us and around the world as we can, for we share this earth together.
And may we remember a merciful benediction of the psalmist:
The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. – Psalm 121:8
Amen.
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