George Floyd & Black Lives Matter
The brutal killing of George Floyd and the riots and peaceful demonstrations since have brought to the forefront the evil reality of racism. Racism should have no place in society and certainly no place in the church. We believe that black lives matter and we grieve with the black community.
As we pray and try to respond in a Godly way these resources might help:
Recommended Read
We Need To Talk About Race – Ben Lindsay
Prayer – LORD’S PRAYER FOR JUSTICE
by Ronald Rolheiser OMI
OUR FATHER
Who always stands with the weak, the powerless, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the aged, the very young, the unborn, and those who, by victim of circumstance, beat the heat of the day.
WHO ART IN HEAVEN
Where everything will be reversed, where the first will be last and the last will be first, but where all will be well and every manner of being, will be well.
HALLOWED BE THY NAME
May we always acknowledge your holiness, respecting that your ways are not our ways, your standards are not our standards. May the reverence we give your name pull us out of the selfishness that prevents us from seeing the pain of our neighbour.
YOUR KINGDOM COME, YOUR WILL BE DONE
Open our freedom to let you in, so that the complete mutuality that characterises your life might flow through our veins, and thus the life that we help generate may radiate your equal love for all, and your special love for the poor.
ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
May the work of our hands, the temples and structures we build in this world, reflect the temple and the structure of your glory so that the joy, graciousness, tenderness, and justice of heaven will show forth within all of our structures on Earth.
GIVE
Life and love to us and help us to always see everything as a gift. Help us to know that nothing comes to us by right and that we must give because we have been given to. Help us realize that we must give to the poor, not because they need it, but because our own health depends upon our giving to them.
US
The truly plural us…Give not just to our own but to everyone, including those who are very different than the narrow us. Give your gifts to all of us equally.
THIS DAY
Not tomorrow. Do not let us push things off into some indefinite future so that we can continue to live justified lives in the face of injustice because we can make good excuses for our inactivity.
OUR DAILY BREAD
So that each person in the world may have enough food, enough clean water, enough clean air, adequate health care, and sufficient access to education, so as to have the sustenance for a healthy life. Teach us to give from our sustenance and not just from our surplus.
AND FORGIVE US OUR SINS
Forgive us our blindness toward our neighbour, our self-preoccupation, our racism, and our incurable propensity to worry only about ourselves and our own. Forgive us our capacity to watch the evening news and do nothing about it.
Do not put us to the test…do not judge us only by whether we have fed the hungry, given clothing to the naked, visited the sick, or tried to mend the systems that victimized the poor. Spare us this test for none of us can stand before your gospel scrutiny. Give us, instead, more days to mend our ways, our selfishness, and our systems.
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
That is, from the blindness that let us continue to participate in anonymous systems within which we need not see who gets less as we get more.
AMEN