A Prayer For These Days

Almighty and Most Merciful God: You spoke the worlds into existence. The mountains stand by your command. The oceans toss and foam because you tell them to. The earth shakes at the sound of your voice.

When we disobeyed your voice, when we did not love your Word, the world grew wicked and so you spoke a flood. When men despised your word again and lifted themselves up and built a great city with a tower reaching up into the sky. You came down and spoke a flood of confusion. When our fathers went down into a strange land, they became slaved by the gods, by the demons, by their sins, by a wicked tyrant who did not know you who refused to bow to your Word. So you spoke blood in their rivers and sores on their backs. You spoke flies and locusts and you destroyed their land. You put out the light of the wicked and they went down into the darkness of death, but you had mercy on your people and you shined your light upon them, and they walked through the sea unharmed with walls of water on their right hand and on their left.

Again and again, you have been our God. You have been our fortress, our rock, our stronghold, our deliverer, our judge, our Savior. When we have forgotten your word, you have risen up for us. When we have rejected your word, you have had mercy upon us. When tyrants and cruel men have oppressed us and taunted us and sought to crush us, though you have turned your face from us for a little while, your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

And in the fullness of time, you sent your Word, and the Word became flesh dwelt among us. But sinful men hated Your Word again. They despised it. They rejected it. They spat on it. They mocked it. They condemned it. And finally, they crucified it. They hung your Word, Your Good Word, Your Life-Giving Word on a cross. They drove spikes through His hands and feet and they drove a crown of thorns into His head. They pierced His side with a spear. And they buried Him in a tomb, sealed with a stone, and guarded by a regiment of Roman soldiers.

Our Father, your Word could never stay down. Your Word could never stay dead. Your Word cannot be silenced or else the whole world would cease to exist. Apart from your Word, we would not be alive. And so Your Word, crucified for sinful men, judged for sinful men, buried for sinful men, swallowed up all our sin, all our death, all our evil. What our sin deserved, your Word spoke justice. What our guilt demanded, Your Word spoke the ransom paid. What we could not pay, Your Word said, It is finished.

And on the third day, you raised your Word from the dead with indestructible life, our Savior, our Deliverer, our Hero. And when He had been seated at the right hand of Your Power, He poured out His Spirit of Power and Comfort on all who trust in Him. And You spoke the Word of a New Creation, a New World coming, and the judgment of all sin, all evil, and the end of all sorrow, all sickness, all death.

Father, we are in Moscow, Idaho as living proofs of this Word, your Living Word, Alive from the dead forever. We are here because we were dead in our sins, and we hated your Word. But you broke through all our excuses, all our pride, all our sin, and you raised us up to life and light. You have shown us your grace and glory, and now we cannot get enough. We praise you. We worship you. We bow before you. We lay our lives before you. All that we are belongs to you. Take our lives and use them. Take our energy and spend it. Take our feeble attempts and make them sing. We are your servants, and everything that we are is for you and for your glory and for your kingdom.

But Father, once again, men have turned away from your word. There is always some evil, but Father, in our land, there is great evil. There is great confusion. We have rejected You as our King, and now everyone does what is right in his own eyes. And we cannot and we will not see that this is of our own making. We cannot see that rejecting your Word is to invite death and darkness and more confusion. Father, You know better than we do: but wicked men abuse their wives and children and those they are responsible for. They yell at them and curse them and hurt them and abuse their positions of authority and power. They sell their daughters for prostitutes, and buy them on internet sites for cheap thrills. They crush the hopes of their sons and despise the gift that they are. Wicked women seethe with bitterness and anger. They spew foul words and tear down their homes with cruelty and hatred and resentment. We legislate injustice. We celebrate immorality. We crush the needy and the sojourner. And in the midst of this strife, we have murdered our own little ones by the millions. We have been deaf to their cries. When you have continued to speak life into our world, we have rejected your words of life, and we have invented disgusting and cruel ways to dismember the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. We have lied and called it choice. We have lied and called it reasonable. We have lied and murdered.

In the last few weeks, O God, the atrocities of one of these killing centers has been exposed. Father, in your mercy you have granted us a glimpse of the horror. In your mercy, you have allowed us to see pictures of babies murdered and hear descriptions of how their murders were carried out.

O God, come down and save us. How long O Lord will you not listen to the cries of these little ones here and throughout the world? How long will you let your Word be blasphemed and mocked? Our leaders stand up, and they say that you do not care, that you do not see, that you do not exist, that they will not bow to your rule. Father, act now. Let them see your glory now. Let their proud faces be full of shame now. Let their bloody hands be exposed now. Let the wicked be brought down now. O God, come down and break their evil arms, disarm their lying schemes and chase them all away. Let the nations see that you are God and there is none other. Let them see that you have enthroned Your Son, Your Word, our Lord Jesus Christ forever. Let them see and be cut to the heart. Let them see and know that there is a Judge in heaven who sees all things and knows all things and who will demand an account.

Father, stir us up, to a righteous anger, a righteous indignation. Teach us to pray, teach us to love, teach us to act, teach us to love our wives, submit to our husbands, graciously teach our children, obey and honor our parents, love our enemies, do go to those who mistreat us or misunderstand us. Teach us to love our enemies. Teach us to hate sin, fight evil. Give us courage. Give us wisdom. Give us your power. Give us, Your Spirit.

We lift up to you those who are hurting and suffering in Boston this week. We lift up to you those women and others who ache and suffer in agony for what they have done to their own children. We lift up those doctors who have carried out these atrocities. We ask you to save them, to heal them, to comfort them, and bring them your peace.

Father of the Risen Christ… for Jesus’ sake, hear our prayers.

Amen.