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actively seeking fairness between everyone is part of that call.
Poverty, war, religious persecution, racism, all of them, unjust. Sometimes it is all
overwhelming, and figuring out what we can do to help seems a daunting task.
Sometimes we don’t know how we can take action, or what we can do to help, but
prayer and honest discussion are always the best places to begin.
Prayer
(by Anne Hartley, inspired
by Prayer of St. Francis)
Dear God,
Heal all that is broken in our
hearts, in our streets, and in our
world.
Give us eyes to see your image in
every human being. Help us inter-
rupt the patterns of injustice, and
get in the way of everything that
destroys life.
Give us imagination -- not to accept the world as it is but to dream of the world as it
could be.
Free us from the systems that keep us down and hold us hostage. Help us name the
sins in our lives and in our world so that we can truly be free to love. Set us free from
hatred and fear -- liberate the oppressed and the oppressors. And give us the faith to
believe that no one is beyond redemption.
Make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us bring love;
Where there is injury, let us bring healing;
Where there is deception, let us bring truth;
Where there is doubt, let us bring faith;
Where there is despair, let us bring hope;
Where there is darkness, let us bring light;
Where there is sadness, let us bring joy.
And where there is apathy, let us bring revolution.
May your Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven -- in Ferguson, in New York, in
Kabul, in Gaza, in Jerusalem, in Baghdad, and all over the world. Amen.
_______
Jennifer Rockenback,
Mother of Hartley and Jude,
Parishioner