"O Lord, Hear Our Prayer" - 25 September 2022

 

Almighty God, you have taught us not to think of ourselves only, but also for the wants and needs of others. We pray for the many burdened and oppressed we know who have been crushed and had their purposes and dreams overthrown; for the many who are afflicted by poverty, worn down and worn thin by disease, illness, and ailment; for the many who are weary and heavy laden, in gloom and misery, and those suffering for righteousness’ sake (…). Help them in the ways that are most fitting and suitable to their need that they all may rest in you. O Lord, hear our prayer. 

Lord of all righteousness, whose ways are right, whose plan is for “human flourishing” – which can only come by flourishing in your wise ways instead of trailing off into the ways of our out-of-order world. Father, look upon our country, upon the different generations who have different ways of decoding and deciphering our present society; upon the educational institutions that often see themselves as morally and intellectually superior; upon the social agenda-izers in our land who are wreaking havoc, throwing around threats and name calling at those who withstand them. O God, not just for our sakes, but for future generations, for our children’s sakes, and for our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren’s sakes, please turn this moral and social madness on its head. Help us to see our own fault in this mess (certainly our faults corporately, and maybe personally), to own up to them, confess our wrong, and seek to pursue right. But also bring many in our nation, before it’s too late, to see the train wreck they are producing; to recognize how they could be leaving behind themselves a reeking heap of destroyed human lives. Good God, have mercy on us. O Lord, hear our prayer. 

LORD God, the Almighty, who gives power to the faint, and to the one who has no might you increase strength. Even though youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; yet those who wait for you, O LORD, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. O God, lift us up on eagle’s wings; renew our strength; rouse us with renewed hope and life to run and not be weary, to walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:29-31). O Lord, hear our prayer.