Lord, this has been a tough year. Mass shootings and anti-Semitic
attacks are at an all-time high in our nation. Churches have been shot up,
forcing armed security guards in churches to kill their attackers. I do not judge these Christians. I would also
defend myself and others if attacked. But Jesus, I wonder how it fits into your
teaching about nonviolence and nonresistance.
Political discourse has degenerated into sound bites and
talking points. Name-calling, intimidation and bullying has taken the place of
thoughtful discussion. Probably never since the Civil War have we been so
divided as a nation. It is no accident that immediately after that war the
president was impeached and now another president has been impeached.
Then there is climate change, which nearly everyone agrees
is real but disagrees as to its cause. Consequently we cannot agree on a
solution. The youth are angry at our inaction, but those in power ridicule
them, ignore them, or pay lip service to their idealism. In a few decades the
youth will grow into adults and rule the nations. That alone is reason for
hope.
Spiritually our nation seems to be in freefall. Young people
are abandoning religious institutions and organizations. The politicization and
hypocrisy of established Christianity is repugnant to them. Finding the church
increasingly irrelevant to their lives, they have voted with their feet. Churches
as know them will cease to exist as aging members die off, unless Christians repent
and change.
But I have to believe that genuine spirituality and the eternal
gospel will prevail. I pray for religious
revival in our land. In the place of today’s fossilized faith, which is
desperately clinging to its glory days of worldly power and influence, I pray there
will arise a truly “catholic” (universal) spirituality that will transcend
religious parochialism. Common experience of the Divine will unite religious
people rather than divide them. That is my hope and prayer.
O Lord, this New Year’s day, I reaffirm the prayer you offered
two thousand years ago, and pray it will be fulfilled in our generation – or at
least our grandchildren’s lifetimes:
Jesus said, “I pray
that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that
they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one
even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly
one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you
loved me.”
May unity prevail. May love triumph. May peace reign. Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.