Prayers to Prepare Your Heart for an Election: Love
What if praying for a Samaritan kind of love makes a difference?
Prayer is simply conversing with God about the things of life that are important to us.
Judging by the anxiety flowing from television and radio, noting the rancor on social media, and hearing the experts all say this election is consequential, surely Tuesday, November 5 is among the things that are important to us.
To my knowledge, none of my readers have a large platform they use to influence millions of people. Few of us traverse the halls of governmental power. The vast majority of us only have our one little vote.
Is that really all we’ve got?
What if we could talk to God about our concerns and hopes? What if that would make a difference?
The next four weeks The Gospel of the Kingdom will be dedicated to leading us in prayer for our concerns and hopes surrounding the election. I will use entries and art from Prayers for the Pilgrimage by two of my colleagues, W. David O. Taylor and Phaedra Taylor.
Today’s prayer focuses on a Samaritan kind of love (Luke 10:25-37).
I sometimes read about rich and famous people who say that if they don’t get their way in this election, they are leaving the country. That is, of course, their legitimate choice. However, 90% of U.S. citizens don’t have the financial independence to implement that choice. They are stuck on the side of the road, having to live with whoever is elected, whatever legislation passed, and how such laws are enforced. This is especially true for the marginalized in society. They are like the man on the side of the road who needs a Samaritan to express loving care.
For this week, let’s not pray that “I win” in the selfish sense of our favorite candidate winning. Let’s shift our prayers to focus on the poor, the weak, the oppressed, and the marginalized. Let’s pray for candidates up and down our ballots to be elected who best facilitate the love of God. In this way, God wins, and his victory is a balm for the stripped, beaten, robbed, and half-dead.
The powerful have access to The Machine. But the oppressed need us to use the power of our voice to call out to God on their behalf.
Read the prayer below once, just to take in its words and feeling.
Read it again and make it a prayer for yourself.
Read it a third time, but led by the Spirit, edit it as you go, making it a Samaritan kind of prayer in which you ask God to let those on the side of life’s road be noticed and cared for by the people we elect to office.
O Lord, you whose love is unfailing, flood my heart with your love, I pray, and where my heart may be empty or hard, help me to feel afresh my belovedness this day, so that I may be freed to love you and my neighbor with the fearless love of God and thereby fulfill the greatest of all commandments. I pray in the name of Jesus, the One who has loved me to the end.
Amen.