Please join me for the next few moments in our Benediction.
"Father God,
This week, as the world looks on, help the leaders in this room create a civil dialogue about our future.
We need you, God, as individuals and also as a nation.
We need you to protect us from our enemies, but also from ourselves, because we are easily tempted toward apathy.
Give us a passion to advance opportunities for the least of these, for widows and orphans, for single moms and children whose fathers have left.
Give us the eyes to see them, and the ears to hear them, and hands willing to serve them.
Help us serve people, not just causes. And stand up to specific injustices rather than vague notions.
Give those in this room who have power, along with those who will meet next week, the courage to work together to finally provide health care to those who don’t have any, and a living wage so families can thrive rather than struggle.
Help us figure out how to pay teachers what they deserve and give children an equal opportunity to get a college education.
Help us figure out the balance between economic opportunity and corporate gluttony.
We have tried to solve these problems ourselves but they are still there. We need your help.
Father, will you restore our moral standing in the world?
A lot of people don’t like us but that’s because they don’t know the heart of the average American.
Will you give us favor and forgiveness, along with our allies around the world?
Help us be an example of humility and strength once again.
Lastly, father, unify us.
Even in our diversity help us see how much we have in common.
And unify us not just in our ideas and in our sentiments—but in our actions, as we look around and figure out something we can do to help create an America even greater than the one we have come to cherish.
God we know that you are good.
Thank you for blessing us in so many ways as Americans.
I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice.
Let Him be our example.
Amen."
Greetings from Santorini
7 minutes ago
6 comments:
Thanks for being the first I've found tonight who posted the transcript of the prayer. I missed it on TV.
I though Don Miller was a perfect person to offer the opening prayer.
His vagueness bothers me, for he did not pray for Iraq, he did not pray for men and women suffering in specific circumstances. He did not pray for the leadership of the party. He did not pray about anything specific at all. In truth, his prayer sounds like a liturgical prayer, like something one might read at the back of the hymnal under the heading "Political Convention."
@Benjamin: Really? I think it was a well-delivered benediction that summed up what seems to be the general consensus among emerging Evangelicals.
Read my full (albeit short) post at http://mikeswheels.blogspot.com/2008/08/donald-millers-benediction.html
Wow! Did Jesus Christ merely give His life against the forces of injustice? Or did He do it to save people from their sins. What this world needs is the Gospel of Jesus Christ for salvation, then all those other things may or may not happen, but we what we cannot do is moralize unbelievers, and that is what Donald Miller is advocating for.
Ryan, yes Jesus did come to save us from our sins, but we've been preaching salvation and morality to a world that doesn't relate to that message. People who don't attend church don't understand why we're trying to "save" them. But they do see the injustices in the world and recognize that something isn't right. So this is the common ground we have with unbelievers, and by using this to begin a conversation with them, our hope is that Jesus can use that developing relationship to then speak to them about salvation. If we don't first begin a relationship with someone, they will have no reason to want us to give them "Jesus and salvation".
engaging them in conversation is appropriate, but the medium of prayer ought not to be used to begin this "conversation"
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