A Prayer for Grief in our Politics
This prayer was offered by Rick Barry as part of our June 5 Faith and Politics Prayer Call. You can sign up for future calls at the bottom of this page.
“The LORD is near to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Heavenly Father,
You are the God who sees us when we are shrunken down. The God who hears us when we cry. The God who was so moved by our plight that you sent your son to experience what we were experiencing. You raised him from the dead to show us that you are greater than the things we suffer. And scripture ends with the promise that you will send him back to us to usher us into a kingdom where every sickness is healed, every hidden injustice is revealed, and every tear is dried and comforted.
You didn't have to care about our grief, but you did. And you do. And you will.
We pray for your will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. We pray that people in this country who claim your name and who proclaim the coming of your kingdom can live lives now that are worthy of the promises you make to us.
You've charged us with being light to the world and salt to the earth. You've charged us with being the actual embodiment of your son's presence here and now. “Where two or more are gathered in his name, there he is also.” So let our lives—individually and together—be a testimony to his healing and his comfort.
We confess that this is easier for us to do at the individual scale than at the political scale. It's easier for us to accept the grief of a person we know than it is to accept the grief of a lot of people, most of whom we don't.
We inhabit a political culture that teaches us to compare our suffering to the suffering of others. We inhabit a political culture that teaches us that each person or each group of people should re be responsible for their own grief. We inhabit a political culture that teaches us that caring for the grief of others can only mean seeing our own grief increase.
For the times when we believe that, we are sorry.
For the times we ignore oppression, exploitation, abuse, violence in all of its forms, we are sorry.
For the times that we turn a deaf ear to problems that we don't share, for the times that we try to explain away the rage and indignity that other people are expressing because we don't believe in it, for the times that we think a crisis doesn't matter until it happens to us, we are sorry.
Forgive us for the way our self-interest misrepresents you to our friends and family and neighbors. Forgive us for the way our obsession with indulging our own grief and our refusal to draw toward the grief of others leaves our neighbors feeling trapped and alone. Forgive us for the ways in which we make the country you've carried us into a worse, less just place through our refusal to live with the confidence and security that should come with being citizens of your greater kingdom.
Forgive us for taking the light of your kingdom and hiding it under the bushels of self-interest, or of political tribalism, of racism or classism or moralism.
Forgive us, Lord, for Jesus's sake, and give us opportunities to do better.
Through the still, small voice of your Holy Spirit; through the faithful words of our brothers and sisters; through the teaching, correcting, and training in righteousness of your word, teach us to live lives that tell the story of your son. Teach us to reenact now, in small ways, the tremendous pain he went through to draw near to us—and the tremendous comfort and mercy that he will bring for us when he returns.
Give us words to speak and actions to take that testify to that truth, especially when we engage with civic life. No matter where we may stand on (or off of) the political spectrum, we want our neighbors, especially our neighbors who wouldn't expect us to care about them, to understand the depth of your concern because of the way they see your people act.
You pray these things in Jesus' name for your glory.
Amen.
Rick Barry is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Christian Civics.
Throughout the 2024 election season, the Center for Christian Civics will be leading twice-monthly prayer calls, featuring guided prayer for the complex relationship between faith and politics in a polarized era. To get reminder emails and login links about these calls, fill out the form below!