We’ll continue to make particular Jesus’ instruction to pray for our Father’s kingdom to come and will to be done in our time and place as it is in heaven.
Adapting Ernest Campbell’s “A City-Dweller’s Prayer,” we’ll focus our attention this week on the third stanza (embolden below).
When you get to this part of the prayer, slow down. Let the words sink into your heart, and let the Spirit lead you to express the specifics on which they light: the masks we and neighbors wear as protection, the longings, and pursuits to be who we are truly created to be (and all the false selves sold and bought in our society), the timidity that keeps us from “issues” and the courage to know our place in salvation's story here and now. Confess and express these for yourself and as a part of our social collective in the presence of the One for whom nothing is hidden. Then finish the prayer.
Come back to these words and insights throughout the week ahead, seeing through what divides to what and who unites, and trusting that He is working in and through you for those around you even now.
Pray with your faith family…
Father, our God of every time and place,
prevail among us too;
within the city that we live
among the people whose streets we share
and whose souls we learn to love,
your promise to renew.
Our people move with downcast eyes,
tight, sullen, and afraid;
Surprise us with your joy divine,
for we would be remade.
O Father whose will we can resist,
but cannot overcome,
Forgive our harsh and strident ways,
the harm that we have done.
Like Babel’s builders long ago
we raise our lofty towers,
And like them, too, our words divide,
and pride lays waste our powers.
Behind the masks that we maintain
to shut our sadness in,
There lurks the hope, however dim,
to live once more as your design.
Let wrong embolden us to fight,
and need excite our care;
If not us, who? If not now, when?
If not here, Father, then where?
Our forebears stayed their minds on you
in village, farm, and plain;
Help us, their crowded, harried kin,
no less your peace to claim.
Give us to know that you do love
each soul that you have made;
That size does not diminish grace,
nor concrete hide your gaze.
Grant us, Father, those who labor here
within this throbbing maze,
A forward-looking, saving hope
to galvanize our days.
Let Jesus, who loved Jerusalem,
and wept its sin to mourn,
Make just our laws and pure our hearts;
so shall we be reborn!