Prayers for our Country

 

Tomorrow is election day in the United States.  There is so much sitting, stirring, and swirling in the air around us.  There is fear and frustration we feel we are inhaling with every breath.  There is uncertainty and confusion.  There is angst, anxiety, anger, and almost every emotion available exhaled with each breath, felt in each keystroke posted onto social media.  The truth is, we may not know the results of the election for several days as election workers count ballots and verify results.  It is hard, holy work.  Today and tomorrow, I want to invite us into a time of prayer for our country.  I invite you to be open to God’s presence.  We have been listening to the prophet Isaiah for the last several weeks.  This was intentional and prayerful ~ he was brash and bold in the face of chaos and challenge.  Isaiah lived during Exile, when the people of God could smell the Cheetos on the breath of the Babylonian army surrounding them.  The people of God would be defeated.  The temple would be ransacked, left in rumble and ruin.  Life would be turned upside down.  Faith seemed foolish or shattered or at least dented, as leaders were carted off to live in Babylon where they sat and wept.  How can you sing to God in a foreign land?  How can you sing to God when everything has gone to you know where in a handbasket?  How can you sing to God when all the exterior evidence of goodness and grace have been shattered like glass that has fallen on the tile floor?  Those ancient questions are still our questions.  How do we sing to God when the debris on our curbs and scars on the landscape from trees uprooted from hurricanes are a daily reminder of what we have gone through?  How do we sing to God when we are exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally?  When wars still rage on ~ with violence begetting violence?  When we struggle to love our enemies as Jesus calls us not just as a good consideration but a commandment?  Please pray with me:

 

God, we pray for our country tomorrow.  We pray for people as they vote that election spaces will be safe, and people can exercise this right.  We pray for election workers who may face difficult and demanding situations, because of the anger and angst.  We pray for the leaders of our country; those who are running and those who will continue to serve.  O God, we lament that perhaps what unites us the most right now is our dissatisfaction and dismay and distrust of each other.  What unites us now is fear of the other.  What seems to be acceptable is our cynicism and criticism and calling out everything that is wrong.  We lament that we lack courage to weep.  We confess that we prefer a confident lie to a messy truth.  We confess that we judge and throw stones on social media and treat each other as less than created in Your image.  Have mercy on us, O Christ.  You call us, Jesus, not just to believe in you, like it some kind of test, but to let You, O Christ, abide in us.  Let Your gospeling wisdom interrupt, intercede, and inform our hearts, words and very lives every moment this week.  In the strong name of the One who was with the people of God in good times and bad, through Exodus and Exile, and everything in-between.  Amen.