Day 229 | Tuesday, 3 November 2020

Day 229 - Audio Version

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Day 229 | Tuesday, 3 November 2020

 I am praying for our nation and our democracy today.  Also, prayers for the families of those killed in the plane accident in Jamestown on Sunday night.

 A Beginning: A Focus on Peace
“Come, holy and gracious God, place your story of love next to the worn fabric of our lives.  Come, enter our hearts and bring peace.  Bring restored hope, renewed energy and revived joy. Come to our troubled world.  Lift the fallen, feed the children, set us to doing the things that make for peace.  Teach us to sing and serve, care and rejoice.”

 An Invocation:
“We come in prayer to you, O God. As we worship you and as our citizens are called to be in a National Day of Prayer may it be a time of sincerity and of deep communion with you. Keep us from practicing the forms of religion instead of seeking the power of Christ. Through your dynamic Spirit may we find the strength needed for every occasion in life. Amen.”

 A Prayer for Government
“Sojourning God, you see so much in our world - way beyond what we can fathom. As governments rise and fall, you see the politics and the dreams. As elections come and go, you see what lies in all our hearts.

Many know government as an entity of cynicism or fear. This is why we need to pray to you, O God. We are a people to whom power is so important, and we often miss the power that you offer us every day. Not power OVER, but power WITH others. May our government, and governments throughout our world, learn to bless you with hearts of grace and care for all peoples.

Help us to continue praying, so that corruption may someday die. In the name of Christ, who never hesitated to call his own government in the temple and in the world into question. Amen.”

 “Creator and Sovereign of humankind: We worship you in churches in which the flag of our nation is displayed alongside the cross of your son. So, guide us in our worship that the contemplation of the cross on which he died for all might help us live under our flag, resolved that it stars and stripes shall spell liberty and justice for all.

We thank you for these United States, for this nation of immigrants, for this noble experiment with unity within diversity. While it is our responsibility to recognize and to mend much that is wrong with our country, we give you hearty praise for so much that is right.

We thank you for our legacy of enterprise, fairness and hopefulness passed down among us through the generations from our very beginnings. We praise you for a system of government in which dissent is not merely tolerated but expected and encouraged. We thank you for a system of justice which, in spite of many flaws, manages to make room for mercy. And we glorify your name for the men and women in our midst who prod us, needle us, plague us to remember the gap between our rhetoric and our practice and to work at closing the gap.

So, we pray for our nation, fervently, in the name of him who loved his nation with all his heart but always put justice and compassion for people first. Amen”

 Lord, our God, our nation is so divided on this day even in the midst of the worst pandemic we have seen.  We seek your help in healing our nation.  Help us as individuals, be healers and not dividers.  Bring us peace in the midst of so much trouble.  Lord, hear our prayers.  AMEN