Adapted from Shaping the Prayers of the People: The Art of Intercession, by Samuel Wells and Abigail Kocher, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014
Covenanting God, your people betrayed you and exchanged their liberation for an idol. Be close to all who experience profound betrayal; who know what it means to trust and be let down, to promise and be forgotten, to sacrifice and be ignored, to believe and be heartbroken. Bless all who struggle with anger, bitterness, and thoughts of revenge, and those who wonder if they can ever trust again. And yet you changed your mind and did not visit disaster on your people. Fill the hearts of all who are searching for the grace to change their minds, to try again, to hope, to live beyond resentment, and to trust their own judgment. Give us grace to change our own minds, to overcome our pride and hard-heartedness, and to enter the freedom you promise us.
Liberating God, empower all your children who long for the freedom to vote, to live without fear, to break out from oppression, to remake our society as equals under the law. Sustain those in Minneapolis who seek a new way of life in their city. Bless the people of Chicago and New York and Los Angeles and Richmond as they hope for the just and peaceful exercise of power among them. Visit your people in every place where violence is part of government control and opposition incurs danger. Strengthen those who work for a healthy future for our nation, and encourage all who experience life in this country as one of disadvantage, fear, or slavery.
Loving God, you walk with us in the valley of injustice, accompany us in the wilderness of COVID-19, speak with us on the mountain, and promise us flourishing life with you. Be present to all who face serious illness, especially this pandemic that disproportionately strikes those among us who are black, brown, or native. Give them hope, alleviate their pain, help them to plan their future, and above all bring them friends. Bless the work of hospital chaplains and all who listen and enter the mystery of pain with the sick and the dying. In a moment of quiet we offer you one person we know to be facing the reality of the end of life. . . . With healing balm their soul fill and every faithless murmur still.
Transforming God, you turn our weakness into your opportunity, our sin into your grace, our pride into your wisdom, our folly into your mercy, our evil into your grace. Turn the wounds of our sin into the glory of your resurrected body, that we might live more truly, love more deeply, and follow more faithfully, now and forever. Amen.
