Our nation stands close to the eve of the legally-determined day for one of the most thoroughly studied and important elections in our history. Every registered voter has the invaluable opportunity and obligation to help direct the next two or four or six years, but only half of us will vote. The half who shall vote will do so with greatly varying degrees of enthusiasm for the various candidates whom they select. Let us worship the God who eagerly goes with us in this bi-annual victorious and vexing process.
Pastoral Prayer
We turn to Thee, O God, as one who frequently was called “the Lord God of hosts” by the people of Israel. To them Thou art the God of Armies, supposing that it was Thy will to lead people in battle against those whom they believed opposed Thee. When we deeply ponder Thy nature, and compare it to our nature, we wonder how Thou dost put up with us at all. Yet Thy love for all Thy sons and daughters, however true or false we may be to Thy purposes, is without limits. For that we give Thee the sincerest praise and thanks we are able to offer, especially when we cannot be absolutely certain whether we are either true or false to Thy will for us in Thy world. Help us to live in perpetual gratitude to Thee, Lord God, and to display that gratitude in how we live.
We pray for our nation as we come once again to an election with great national, state, and local importance. After all the rancor and distrust which has been so brazenly displayed by all people and sides of every issue, we ask that somehow we may emerge from this election far more united and less fractured, more convinced of our commonality and far less convinced of what we might suppose to be the criminality of our political adversaries. Enable a people who show in countless ways how deeply they care about political matters also to show how deeply they can become committed to civility and respect as they debate their differences.
We also pray for all of our fellow citizens who are faced with such great personal challenges that they shall show no interest in or concern for this election at all: the seriously ill, the mentally unstrung, the physically depleted, the psychologically un- hinged, and the spiritually lost. Most of us most of the time have a solid sense of equilibrium, but some are constantly cast adrift by one circumstance or another. We ask Thy healing spirit to enter into their troubled hearts, bodies, and minds. Grant healing to them, and grant equilibrium of mind and spirit to all of us. These things we ask in the name of him who continues to try to lead us beyond the mundane and the unimportant to the majestic and the spiritually unimpeachable. Now we pray together as Jesus taught us, saying, Our Father….