Over the next few months we will regularly share favorite prayers from our Book of Common Prayer (BCP). If you have a favorite you’d like to share, please let me know! ([email protected])
Today’s prayer is from Lou Markert, and it can be found in the Prayers and Thanksgivings section of the BCP (pp. 810-841):
33. For Cities
Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of that holy City to which the nations of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, p. 825)
Lou says: “This prayer speaks to me in many tongues, and never fails to remind me that I am not alone: not in my despair, nor in my hopefulness. It also reminds me — and I often need reminding — that it is only in community and with each other that we become fully and beautifully human.”
Amen!
