Dear God,

Please, forgive my forward fashion and pardon this interruption, for certainly, I am all too aware how terribly busy you. However Lord, your children are in trouble. We need You.

You can see what we have made of what was once an unblemished and perfect world. We have desecrated the beauty of the earth: we pollute the waters and the air is bitter to breathe and the stench is powerful. We fight, often, country against country, nation against nation. Some wars seem endless, time is of no matter. Your very own chosen ones, the Hebrew people are still at odds with the Palestinians. And, yes, they fight, they kill, all in Your most Holy Name.  It is heard they say they fight a holy war. When, dear God, did war ever become holy?

Lord, it is not only nations that fight against another, for swords are raised against the innocent, too. The vile nature of hatred is shown by individuals who simply kill, as if for sport, for game, for the entertainment value the sick mind conjures and creates. You made us in Your image. How is that we have become so violent, so abusive, so insensitive to those who perhaps are different than ourselves; who worship and give praise in fashions that are new to our own; to those whose skin hue may be darker or lighter?  If created are we in Your image, how can we be so blind to see You in one another?

It is out of my confounded despair; my hands are raised in fear and frustration. When, Lord, will we cease to kill, to maim, to destroy, to live disconnected from one another?

Yet God, I ask in humility, what is wrong with us? What is happening to us, Your greatest of all creation; humankind, little less than the angels? Lo, we behave abominably; like demons from Hades, with flaming spears that pierce the body, killing mortal life while making efforts to destroy the spirit in turn. We have achieved such heights, accomplished the impossible, we have conquered much but we have gained little. We have been to the moon and have reached the deepest depth of the oceans. Nothing is out of the realm of possibility.  For Lord, again, You made us little less than the angels and they can come and go as they so wish. Yet, the angels fly with the Light and humankind seemingly embraces all too often the darkness of sin. Sad, but true, Lord, we find more horrific manners of hurting, destroying and killing our sisters and brothers. God, hear our prayer. God, hear our plea. God, hear us.

Your beloved Son, our brother Jesus wandered about the desert for some forty days and forty nights. There, in abject solitude and without provisions He stayed, He prayed and He fasted. All this Jesus did to prepare Himself for the human Passover He was to be. We, your Son's followers have set aside some forty days and forty nights, we call it Lent. We too, pray, we fast and we meditate, in order to prepare ourselves to celebrate Your beloved Son's victory over the grave. Jesus defeated sin, once for all. Still, we continue to reject His victory over death by taking life into our own hands and casting it aside, like yesterday's table scraps, life is so disposed.

Lord, my fear is too many of us are not hearing You, or perhaps have chosen to believe that You are no longer relevant. Is it the gift of freedom You made to us that is the cause of our human downfall? Have we been afforded such latitude that we have become numb to the horrors of violence? Is it all sport: the beatings, the lynching, the shootings, the random killings, the mass murders?  Our churches are empty while the streets run red with blood. We who have raced to the heavens in machines of such power and strength choose rather to sink into the depths of hell where evil is both king and queen.

Lord God, Heavenly King, I make a request of You. I speak to You with a voice that embodies the world that longs for answers...please teach us, again, to value, love, embrace, forgive and accept our sisters and brothers the world over without question or hesitation.  Strengthen our resolve to live in peace and appreciate the enormity and weight of the freedom we have, as human beings, as Your gifted children.

Loving God, in closing could you see Yourself to sharing just a bit more of Your Divinity? Let it spark a fire of love in our hearts that spreads as a contagion, like the winds that blow from the four corners of Your created world. May what You share make us a better people; a people blessed, more alive and in keeping with the teachings of Your Son, Our brother and Savior, Jesus the Redeemer. My prayer, I am confident is shared by many, many others. Let these prayers rise up to you as sweet incense that is found to be pleasing to You. Come to our aid, oh Merciful One and answer our pleas.

Your humble servant,

__________________ (signed by any and all who call out to God)

 

Amen.