Voice of the People
Prayer of the people written and delivered by Brian Cubbage on Sunday, February 15, 2015
Merciful, loving, and gracious God,
We confess that we have been preoccupied. We have been concerned with our own projects. We have chased after popularity and a good reputation. We have been more deliberate about being thought to be good than about actually being good. We have dismissed the struggles and demands of your children as inconvenient, untimely, impractical, strident. We have trusted too much to power and to process. Help focus us today on the voices of those you love, those who distract us from our own delusions and beckon us towards your liberating justice.
This day we pray for all those members and friends of our community of faith who have need.
We pray for our Muslim brothers and sisters everywhere: in Chapel Hill, NC; in Houston, TX; across the United States, Europe, Palestine, the Middle East, and worldwide. May we deplore and renounce violence committed in your name, and may all of us who follow in the way of Abraham, exile and wanderer in this world, await your salaam.
We pray for all those who have suffered, and continue to suffer, from violence, especially intimate partner violence; from abuse, whether sexual or emotional or spiritual; and from neglect. We pray that you will help stand them on their own two feet and recover the voices and the agency with which you, in your love, have endowed them.
We pray for all places torn asunder by war and armed conflict. We pray that you, the maker and author of peace, may grind the machines of war to a halt, and that we may learn to make war no more.
We pray for all who suffer violations of their human rights on account of their political conscience: those who are imprisoned, forced into exile, deprived of citizenship, rendered stateless, tortured. May you help to teach us how to acknowledge and resolve conflict without the tools of violence.
We pray for all of those who endure the hatred and oppression of others on account of their race; their ethnicity; their nationality; their gender expression; their sexual orientation; their religion.
We pray finally for all those whose joys and woes and needs are known only to you, God, that you may shelter those deep within your heart.
It is in Jesus' name that we pray.
Amen.