Prayer for Peace

This is the prayer I composed the evening before we attacked Iraq, March 19, 2003.  It is still my prayer today.

Jamie Harrison

 

O nameless God of many names, I know you neither slumber nor sleep, and that you hold this world and its people in your eternal care.  Through your child, Jesus, you have taught me what a life filled with God looks like.  I trust in you.  Through his redeeming life and teaching I have grown to accept the promise that you are determined to draw the whole human family into your life, and that you seek in holy love to create a world where, one day, all your children will live together joyfully.  Deep in my heart I know that your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.  I am grateful for that assurance.

 

Yet, deep in that same heart this evening [and still today], I am filled with sadness as your children teeter on the rim of the caldron of war.  However we found our way to this hour, I feel like we are entering an ominous darkness.  Left to our age-old human devices, we grope blindly in that darkness, once again resorting to violence to establish peace.  When will we ever learn?  When will we ever learn? Lord, have mercy on us!  Lord God, have mercy on the people of this world!

 

Merciful God, I know that the first heart to break in a time like this is always your heart.  I trust that your compassion is boundless, encompassing the inhabitants and families of every nation.  Therefore, I hold in prayer tonight the names and faces of those I know and love, and the names and faces of those I do not know, but who are certainly loved by you. Protect and shelter the children of every nation who find themselves in mortal conflict.  In the confusion and madness they find around them, give them a sense of your loving presence.  Bind up the wounds of those whose bodies will be broken.  Comfort those who will suffer.  Shelter innocent victims.  Strengthen the doctors and nurses and chaplains and others who care for the fallen.  Deliver from fear all who wait at home praying for sons and daughters sent into harm’s way.  Console the grieving.  Give wisdom to leaders, and humility in proportion to their power.  Hold in your care those whose art it is to craft the miraculous gift of peace.

 

And awaken me tomorrow to your presence, I pray, surrounded by your mercies, and grateful for the light of Jesus shining in the darkness.  Shield me from despair.  Deliver me from hopelessness.  Fill me with your spirit so I may know your peace and share it with others.  All this I ask, and more, for your goodness sake.  Amen

 

Woodstock, CT

March 19, 2003