The Voting is Over

I want to take a short break from my series on the Missing Years of the Bible.  I will get back to it later this week.  Right now I want to focus on the fact that the election of the President of the United States of America has been completed.

The voting is over.  The reality of the post-election United States has yet to set in.  There is plenty of analysis to be offered, some of it might even be useful or insightful.  But if anything, what we have seen during this election campaign, besides lies, manipulations of systems, fear, and the worst mud-slinging for any campaign in years (possibly ever), is that we are a divided nation in many, many respects.

So this morning I would offer two prayers with the knowledge that perhaps had I and we all been praying like this over the last 16 years, we might be in a completely different place.  Never too late to start, though.

This is a prayer from Thomas Merton, who was a Trappist monk, a writer, and a mystic.  May we join our voices together in prayer.

O God, we are one with you.
You have made us one with you.
You have taught us that if we are open to one another, you dwell in us.
Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts.
Help us to realize that there can be no understanding when there is mutual rejection.
O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept you, and we thank you and we adore you, and we love you with our whole being, because our being is your being, our spirit is rooted in your spirit.
Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes you present in the world, and which makes you witness to the ultimate reality that is love.
Love has overcome.  Love is victorious.
Amen.

And the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again into eternal life.
Amen.