A Prayer for a More Complete Civic Witness
This prayer was offered by Rick Barry as part of our September 9 prayer call.
God, you are so far above us, and yet you hear our cries and consider our needs and make your will visible to us.
Thank you for that. Thank you for caring about us. Thank you for trusting us enough to call us to join you in your mission. As your son said, thank you for not considering us servants, but friends.
Though you are high in the heavens and we are low on the ground, you don't resent us for being concerned about the things on the ground. Your word in the Old Testament tells us that you see and hear and understand the things that distress us in this world, and that the things that distress us in this world aren't just minor distractions or annoyances or inconveniences, but that they are in fact sin. The prophets chronicled so many different ways that your people cried for peace, for healing, for justice, for mercy, for sustenance, for reconciliation, for safety. And you said that those cries are the reason you come to us.
We are supposed to be ambassadors to this world until your son returns, but this world needs you in so many more ways than any of us could ever hope to speak to, or influence, or help, or witness to.
You heard cries for protection from violence. You heard cries for deliverance from starvation or famine or cruelty. You chastise people for unfair market practices and for showing preferential treatment in the courts and in the law. In Genesis three, you tell us that sin isn't just about broken relationships and broken societies, it's about a broken world. You heard our cries of not being able to pull forth food from the ground, and you said that it's because cursed is the ground because of sin.
The world needs you in so many more ways than any one of us can show up. This can be overwhelming. We confess that some of us respond to this limitation by trying to withdraw from the public square entirely. We try to insulate ourselves from the multitude of tasks that are so far beyond us that need to be undertaken to make your kingdom felt and seen and understood. We try to deny the responsibility of living incarnate lives.
And some of us respond to this limitation by just ignoring anything that is beyond our reach or our understanding. We think that the only issues you care about are the ones we care about. We think that the ways we are equipped to engage and serve are the only ways anyone should be allowed to engage or serve. We try to get other people to conform to our image instead of learning together how to conform to yours.
For our negligence in caring for the world and our malpractice in evangelism and discipleship, we are sorry.
Show us your heart for the places we live, for the city and state and country that you have called us into. Help us to see clearly—and not fear—the fact that your heart is larger than ours, that you are concerned for things that we neglect or don't understand. You are concerned for people whose cries we have not yet heard. Open our eyes to new ways that the world needs you. Help us recognize things that are broken that, until now, we had not even understood need to be healed.
Teach us to honor the burdens on the hearts of our brothers and sisters that we don't share. Teach us to love and encourage people who are called in your name to missions that are not our own. Put these brothers and sisters in our lives. Let our lives together be a witness to the communities around us and the country around us, a witness that none of us could offer on our own.
No one could look at any one of us and say, “That person is a complete picture of everything the Bible says Jesus cares about.” So, thank you for not asking us to be Jesus alone. Thank you for telling us that you are present where many of us are gathered in your name. Put us together in community, in the church, with people who care about a range of issues. People who care as much about food insecurity as others do about homelessness, as others do about materialism, as others do about violence and famine and war.
For the things that we don't even know how to pray about, we thank you that your Spirit intervenes with groans that are too deep for utterance. Give us the humility to learn from brothers and sisters in the public square who are unlike ourselves. And together, in our disparate ministries, in our disparate callings to the communities around us, help us together to paint a more complete picture of who Jesus is than any of us could paint on our own.
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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