Saturday Prayer – Don’t Be Afraid

Holy One,
You’re always telling those you meet not to be afraid. Meet us today.

Another shooting, this one targeting a synagogue, a house of worship.  Open our hearts, so they do not close in cynicism or despair.  Give our prayers wings, fly love and strength and healing to our sisters and brothers in faith.

Meet us today.

And make our prayers only the first step in the courageous and compassionate action we will take now to end gun violence now and forever. Carry us forth to face with humility the wounded and the dying, or to protest loudly in the streets, or to speak boldly before the powers and principalities.

Meet us today.

In every generation, there is reason to fear.  And in every generation, you meet that fear with your persistent insistence that we meet it head on, acknowledge it, and do your life-giving work of mercy and justice anyway.

Meet us today.

Amen.

Jennifer Garrison Brownell serves as pastor at Vancouver United Church of Christ in Vancouver, Washington.  She contributed to the Revgals book There’s a Woman in the Pulpit and is the author of the not-really-about-a-triathlon memoir Swim, Ride, Run, Breathe: How I Lost a Triathlon and Caught My Breath. She blogs at There Is a River.

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