Prayer for a beleaguered government
The Senate vote on the articles of impeachment of the President of the United States impels people to grapple with issues of utmost magnitude. A contributor to this column offers his prayer.
Dear God, show me how to know, how to judge. Who it is that leads us. Show me how to heal a house divided.
Wash me of prejudice. Rid me of reaction. May love dissolve all hatred, all contempt in my thought. Free me from the animal nature that seeks its answers in revenge, or feels false safety in sympathy.
Deliver me from mere opinions, from being influenced by opinion. You've made me able to hear Your wisdom; make me willing to listen.
Father and Mother of us all, I want to see the pure reality of Your government, the spiritual design of being. Show me today more of Your indivisible allness, incorruptible compassion, unchanging good. Reveal more of what I am - what all women, men, children, truly are - as Your flawless nature expressed in sparkling, faithful lives.
Disclose to me the universal Christ, Your message to the world this day, every day - the message of Life, revealing the spirituality that animates us; the voice of Truth, bathing us in graciousness. Teach me how to love, live, think, and act as Your child.
I love Your law. It is so simple. I cannot be made to mistake it. One God who is Love. One beneficent Mind that is governing all. Each one made to love his or her neighbor. Made to love those who now seem to be enemies.
Where Your love flows (and love knows no dam or border), fear has no footing, no agenda, no advocate, no audience. Help me to see my way through news and noise. May I be awake and clear and distinct, no part of a mass to be mesmerized. Make me wide-open to Your intuitions. They sound deep within, where humility recognizes truth, and where anxiety has no home.
I rejoice that every office of government is, in its highest sense, representative of Truth, of Principle. I know that I judge things rightly only as I discern them spiritually, as You see them. Your omnipresence makes me want to obey what is right. I know power only as I seek Your authority.
Whatever is not good has no office space, no tenure, no moment in Your allness. As light evicts darkness, truth evicts error of thought and action - in Your way, in the way that blesses all, in the way that restores the body politic to health and wholeness. Show me this way.
Show me something of what Your Son saw when he walked through an angry mob. When he mended broken hearts. When he healed the hopeless. When he condemned sin. When he delivered people from the failure that gripped them. When he disclosed our original innocence.
Show me the good man and good woman that Jesus saw in each face. Let me love as he did. Lead me to the house undivided, the body at peace, the power that lies within consciousness.
Make each capital, each town, a Bethlehem - where bread is broken and truth is found, where love is shared at a common table, and where we all have a place at that table and something worthy to give.
With whole heart I thank God, who gives to all the peace we seek.
The government of divine
Love is supreme. Love rules
the universe, and its edict
hath gone forth: "Thou shalt
have no other gods before
me," and "Love thy neighbor
as thyself." Let us have the molecule of faith that removes mountains, - faith armed with
the understanding of Love,
as in divine Science,
where right reigneth.
Mary Baker Eddy
