Right now, I believe, mine is to be still and listen.
I offer, instead, prayers from others in hopes that they will help you find words to lay before God when your own heart is too weighed down to find the words yourself.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, help us assemble ourselves before you today through our acts of peace and reconciliation with neighbors near and far. Help us to teach the children in our communities what it means to be children of a God who loves us like a mother.
Give us discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that instead we may live deep within our hearts. Grant us anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may wish for justice, freedom, and peace. Bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen. ~ Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
O Father in heaven, who crafted my limbs to serve you and my soul to follow closely after you, with sorrow and repentance of heart I acknowledge before you the faults and failures of today. For too long I have tried your patience and too often I have betrayed your trust; yet you still want me to come to you with a humble heart, as I now do, imploring you to drown my sin in the sea of your infinite love.
O Lord, forgive me for:
My failure to apply to myself the standards I demand of others;
My blindness to the suffering of others, and the time it takes me to learn from my own:
My apathy toward wrongs that do not impact me, and my oversensitiveness to those that do.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. Amen. ~ John Baillie
O God, who makest man to be of one mind in an house and hast called us into the fellowship of thy dear Son: draw into closer unity, we beseech thee, the people of all races in this and every land; that in fellowship with thee they may understand and help one another, and that, serving thee, they may find their perfect freedom; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. ~ Joost de Blank, Archbishop of Cape Town
O Lord, forgive the cruelties of men in every age,
their insensibility to others’ pain,
the deliberation which gives pain
to satisfy and to express
the evil that rebels from love’s surrender to others’ needs
to exalt itself.
O Lord, forgive the carelessness that passes by,
the blunted consciences that will not see,
or fear to see,
the wrongs men do to other men.
Most merciful, most loving Judge, Redeemer of mankind,
thou dost restore the fallen,
thou dost seek out the scattered sheep. ~ Gilbert Shaw
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
Art credits: Grief by Bertram Mackennal; Prayer by Antonio Parreiras; The Anchorite by Teodor Axentowicz; Black Men Praying by Aymara Mejia; Prayer by Mednyánszky László
Thank you for these prayers, friend. Also, I loved the art that you chose to include. This whole post was beautiful.
Thank you, friend. I just felt as though my place in this moment was not to speak but to listen. So I listened and spoke out others’ words instead of my own.