Praying Against Anger, Exhaustion and Despair
This prayer was offered by Rick Barry as part of our July 31 prayer call confronting political violence. You can sign up for future calls at the bottom of this page.
Lord, Proverbs tells us that you hold the king’s heart in your hand. And Ezekiel tells us that you are the God who turns stone hearts into flesh.
Our campaigns in this country go on for too, too long, and that has left so many of us with weary and exhausted hearts.
But the decisions you have entrusted us to make in our cities, states and country—deciding who we will hire to craft our laws and who we will hire to implement our laws—are not decisions we should make out of anger, or fear, or exhaustion, or apathy. They aren’t decisions we should make with a hard heart.
Lord, we bring before you our anger, and we ask you to give us confidence in your judgment. Where our anger is righteous, where our anger is pointed at things that are actually wrong in this world, turn it into gratitude for the kingdom that you have promised is coming.
And where our anger is mis-placed, where it is excessive, or where it is borne out of a desire for control or a desire for comfort or a desire to just not have to deal with the fact that other people exist and reflect your image in different ways, we ask you to break our hearts. Step by step, day by day, lead us away from the temptation toward self-centered anger. Deliver us from the evil of resenting the world you carried us into.
Lord, we bring before you our fear, and we ask you to give us confidence in your Son’s resurrection and return. You gave us a hope that suffering, and loss, and even death can not touch. But so much of our political campaigning is built around teaching us who and what to fear.
We know that fear and anger are tools that political professionals use to try and secure votes. We ask you for the strength and wisdom to not be easily manipulated—through our relationships in the church, through your word and through the still, small voice of your spirit. We ask for eyes to see, ears to hear and minds to understand when public figures are using your name in vain—using the language and culture of our corner of your global church for their own ends.
Lord, we bring before you our exhaustion. Our weariness at our endless campaign cycles, at the constant barrage of things to grieve and mourn, at the way anger and fear over politics has poisoned relationships, at the irresponsible way that tools like social media have made our political problems worse. Give us a love for others that outweighs our weariness, and in that love, lead us to persist in the responsibilities laid out before us.
Lord, we bring before you our apathy. Our temptation to think that the decisions we make don’t matter, that the choices before us don’t matter. The seductive ease of cynicism and nihilism and fatalism.
We know that, historically, in democracies, weariness and apathy are tools used by people who want to consolidate power for themselves, or consolidate power on behalf of some and to the exclusion of others.
But they are not the tools used by your Son. Over and over in his ministry, he called people to see and love and care for their neighbors—and to act on that love. For those who were burdened by their duties, weighed down by them and despondent because of them, he didn’t offer an end to duty. He didn’t offer to remove our yokes. He offered us a yoke that is easier. A burden that is light.
So, free us from the burdens of anger and fear and exhaustion and apathy in our civic lives. Give us the easier yoke of hope and joy and generosity and love. When our political culture would have us ask whether we are angry enough, or afraid enough, empower us instead to ask ourselves—and one another—what we hope for for our neighbors. Empower your church in this country to persist in the public square, but as people casting a vision for what might be good, rather than reacting to what might be wrong.
You didn’t commission us to fight for our lives in the public square. You’ve commissioned us to cultivate foretastes of your kingdom for the people around us. Please go before us in that work, lining up opportunities for us to do that. And please be our rear guard, keeping us rooted in you and your promises and your vision for others, even in the storm of anger and fear and self-interest.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Rick Barry is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Christian Civics.
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