As we prepare to celebrate the 4th of July I offer this prayer for our nation and the church. It is an excerpt from a longer prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr, but this petition seems very timely today.
O Lord, unless you build the house, its builders will have toiled in vain. Unless you watch over the city, in vain the watchman stands on guard.
Look with mercy upon the peoples of the world, so full of both pride and confusion, so sure of their righteousness and so deeply involved in unrighteousness, so confident of their power and so imprisoned by their fears of each other. Have mercy upon our own nation, called to such high responsibilities in the affairs of humankind. Purge us of the vainglory which confuses our counsels, and give our leaders and our people the wisdom of humility and charity. Help us to recognize our own affinity with whatever truculence or malice confronting us that we may not add to the world’s woes by the fury of our own resentments. Give your Church the grace in this time to be as a saving remnant among the nations, reminding all people of the divine majesty under whose judgment they stand, and of the divine mercy of which they and we have a common need. (from Reinhold Niebuhr, Justice and Mercy, edited by Ursula M. Niebuhr (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974), pp. 97-98.)
Peace, David Hansen