Prayer On MLK Day
God of peace,
Today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we remember. We remember the arc of the moral universe and how long it seems. Longer every year. We pray, creator, that the universe of justice open it’s heart to us so that we can walk that arc into a place of equity and peace. We pray for eyes to see a broken world and heart to be broken itself, over and over again until, being shattered, it becomes pieces of the energy of your world that creates, piece by shattered piece a place of Shalom.
Great Imaginer, we remember Dr Martin Luther King Jr and say thank you. As you worked through the writing hands and marching feet and singing heart of Dr. King, so may we be open to your work in us.
We confess our inaction, our anger, our pride. We confess our hatred, our negligence, our hopelessness. We confess our sin of separation from you and from one another.
We confess that we have not protected one another.
We ask for your forgiveness. We ask that we be set free from these things that keep us from living into the radical love of your heart. We ask that we take today and tuck it away into our memories as the day we stood up and said “no more”. We ask that the life of Dr King not be wasted on numbness. We ask for your grace.
God, knowing that to ask for forgiveness means that we are willing to turn away from that which caused us to stumble, may we so turn. May we lift up our eyes and look beyond this horizon, to the one to which we are sent. May we believe that there is a place of peace and justice that already is in motion at that horizon if only we would believe and get going. May we believe in one another. May we believe in ourselves, even in our worst moments of fear and shame.
We love you, loving one. And, creative spark, we know we are loved. May all that love build a web that weaves together all our shattered pieces of energy into a tapestry that glows peace and wears like justice and feels like home.
May we find our home in you. And, may we create a space of belonging so transformative that things on earth will never be the same.
For the sake of the geese and the human and the panther and the oak, for the sake of the waterfall and the stone and the whippoorwill and the black bear. For the sake of life.
In your name, for the sake of all.
Amen.