Lord In Your Mercy, Hear Our Prayer.
On a day when we celebrated freedom for all, innocent people were shot at a parade in a suburb in Chicago and a two year old was orphaned. On a weekend where we celebrated with friends and family, a young man had a firework blow up in his face and killed him. At times like this - what words can we offer? What words might bring solace to our weary souls? What words might erase the sadness and vulnerability of our lives and our world. What words might bring us together in our grief and in our outrage for the violence experienced close to home and around the world.
I am tempted to look away, to ignore, to keeps it all at a distance. Unfortunately, the tragedy and the pain is not out there, or someone else's, it is close. and God invites us to see, to be disturbed to not shout out "peace, peace when there is no peace." But instead to grieve, to pray, to lament, to unite, to be people of hope, light and life. So I lift up my voice in prayer, allowing the spirit to intercede with sighs too deep for words.
All I can voice are laments: Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer. I turn to the prophet Jeremiah and his truth:
I drown in grief.
I’m heartsick.
Oh, listen! Please listen! It’s the cry of my dear people
reverberating through the country.
Is God no longer in Zion?
Has the King gone away?
Can you tell me why they flaunt their plaything-gods,
their silly, imported no-gods before me?
The crops are in, the summer is over,
but for us nothing’s changed.
We’re still waiting to be rescued.
For my dear broken people, I’m heartbroken.
I weep, seized by grief.
Are there no healing ointments in Gilead?
Isn’t there a doctor in the house?
So why can’t something be done
to heal and save my dear, dear people?
Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer. And so I wonder, how might we be the balm, the healing ointment in Gilead in our grieving world? How might we offer more than words, but actions, faith and life?
Pastor Joanna Mitchell
