Prayers to Prepare Your Heart for an Election: Wounding
Can God heal our souls even amidst the chaos and pain of an election year?
To open our newsfeeds is to open ourselves to wounding.
To test it, I just opened mine and found stories on war, society-destroying political rhetoric, a destructive hurricane season, and disinformation leading to a loss of confidence in the truth—all with a social media algorithm that marries us to wounding and divorces us from loved ones.
You could add to this list, I’m sure.
Our souls are tired and bruised. Our emotions are bound to bubble over at any moment. Our families, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and friendships feel fragile—like a toddler who is carrying a priceless vase. Can you feel the anxiety in your soul as you watch your 18-month-old carrying a family heirloom?
We feel much the same as we watch wobbly leaders carrying our inexpressibly valuable world—God’s very creation.
God Consoles and Heals
Thankfully, God consoles us in turmoil. That means he offers us a sense of calm. He is our relief from the constant dissonance in our soul. He supports us when we feel weak and powerless.
And he heals. God is intent on restoring his broken creation, including you and me and all the bleeding places in our hearts, souls, minds, emotions, and social selves.
Here is this week’s prayer from Prayers for the Pilgrimage:
O Lord, you who are the Wounded Healer, we offer to you our wounded lives, our wounded neighborhoods, and our wounded country this day and we ask that you would mend them, so that we might know you as the One who consoles the brokenhearted and heals our broken communities. We pray this in the name of the One who binds up the bruises of his people.
Amen.
Having read it once, use it as a springboard to pray for your family, friends, and neighborhood. Name specific things associated with this election cycle that need healing and ask God for it.
Lastly, place the wounded elements of your life before God. Ask him for healing, consolation, wisdom, and strength to bear with those things that remain unhealed for now.
To open our newsfeeds is to open ourselves to wounding. But to open ourselves to God is to open ourselves to healing and consolation.