Elder Prayer for Grand Avenue Baptist Church, June 7, 2020:
Heavenly Father,
We confess that you are the author of all life. From one man, you have made every ethnicity that lives on the face of the earth. Every person of every ethnicity has been made in your image to subdue and exercise dominion over the earth, as a display of your glory, together.
How it must grieve you to see your image-bearers seek to subdue and exercise dominion over each other! How it must bring you sorrow to see your image—such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery—destroyed!
How it must anger you to see officers of the state—to which you have given the power of the sword—misuse that sword in brutal and murderous ways!
How it must fill you with wrath to hear the cries of those who live in fear of mistreatment go unheard by their fellow image-bearers!
You are the Lord who says, “Because the poor are plundered because the needy groan, I will now arise; I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
Arise, O Lord, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of evildoers; awake for the oppressed; you have appointed a judgment.
Arise, O Lord! Confront the evildoers, subdue them! Let racism and injustice come to an end, and may you establish righteousness!
Arise, O Lord! Strike your enemies on the cheek; shatter the teeth all who practice discrimination, who spread the lies of ethnic supremacy, who abuse your image bearers!
Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand, forget not the afflicted.
You are the Lord who hears the cry of the poor. Cause, your people, us to hear.
You are the Lord who sees the vulnerable and oppressed. Cause, your people, us to see.
You are the Lord who cares for those who are in distress. Cause, your people, us to care.
You are the Lord who rescues those being led away to death. Cause, your people, us to rescue.
We long for the day that Jesus returns, bringing a New Jerusalem, a new city that shall never burn, where the redeemed from every tribe and language and people and nation shall dwell together in unity.
Until that day, we ask you to do anything and everything necessary to end racial division in the United States—to root out the sins that cause it out of our hearts.
For the glory of Christ, the head of the new humanity, we pray this.
Amen.