Sunday, July 3, 2011
Offered by Joyce Shin, Associate Pastor

You, O God, are greatly to be praised. So great should be your praise that it would extend over all the earth, for everywhere you have done and continue to do marvelous things. You transform the world and each life in it. Thus, you have been called Savior and Redeemer by nations, in the public square, and by persons, in the privacy of their hearts.

And though it feels so right to attribute to you every blessed outcome and every pure motivation, we worry, O Lord, that in reality there is more murkiness than meets the eye. In all honesty, we must confess that our motivations are rarely pure, and so we suspect that even when causes are fought in your name, when sides are taken for your sake, when sacrifices are made and lives are lost for your glory, at work is not only your will, but the wills of many—wills to power for self, tribe, and nation.

Help us, Lord, to know the difference. Speak so clearly to our consciences that we will carve away any voice that is not yours. Give us such purity of spirit that our lives will be spent serving all those for whom your Son’s life and love were spent.

It is because of the life your Son lived that we place our ultimate trust in you, Lord. We trust you to enter into the darkest and messiest of places. We trust you to cut through the chaos and violence that overwhelms your world. So make your presence known, mighty God, everywhere you are needed, here and abroad, in the Sudan, in Syria, in Libya. In the struggles for power, distill the voices for freedom and make them heard. Make the most of every minor and major opportunity to restore freedom for all peoples, for you have written such freedom into creation. Be the only author of our lives, the only source of authentic authority upon which to draw.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ and all whom he loved, we pray these things and the prayer that he taught us to say: Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church