God who is Love, God who loves those who we do not understand, who loves those we do not like, who loves those we hate, who rejoices with us as we rejoice, who mourns with us when we mourn-
Please draw near to Renee Nicole Good’s loved ones, especially her family, and most especially her children.
Please draw near to the ICE agents who were around for this tragedy, and especially for the ICE agent who found himself taking a life, and whose life will be forever changed by doing so. Please embolden his family and loved ones to draw near to him in the wake of his own trauma.
Please draw near to the neighbors who witnessed this traumatic event; help them process this horrific tragedy and connect to one another in their grief and anger. Give them rest and clarity in how to inch forward as life goes on, moment to moment.
Please draw near to the protesters who are inevitably so outraged and enraged that their feet move them to a bitterly cold outdoor setting and embolden them to confront the systems with which they are angry. Give them clarity of heart and judgment in peacefully exercising their 1st amendment rights which hold our democracy together.
Please draw near to the ICE agents forming lines at these protests. May You help them choose de-escalation. May You keep them safe.
Please draw near to the police, and potentially National Guard neighbors of Minnesota, who may be called at anytime to support keeping the peace. May You help them to connect to their fellow grieving neighbors. May You help them to de-escalate and maintain trust, or honor the process of rebuilding it where it has been lost.
Please draw near to immigrant neighbors, who are children of God, many of who are here legally -and of whom adult, elderly and child alike- feel forced to live in the shadows. God, draw near to those of your children who move and breathe each day haunted by fear of abduction and of loved ones who may suddenly be gone.
Please draw near to all those in Minnesota, in any given role, who are feeling weary, tired and worn. Comfort them, God-with-us. May they rest in You, and may they listen with courage to follow Your Spirit’s direction.
Please draw near to those in federal leadership who are making consequential decisions about this and so many other high stakes situations. May You give them Wisdom beyond their years and tenure. May You give them courage to pursue collective and cohesive well-being of our country and forsake all self-serving power, corruption, along with rhetoric and rules that incite and foster division.
Please draw near to state leadership as they seek to honor and address Minnesotans’ pain over more tragedies in a short time than any community should bear.
Regardless of what people in power may do, God, please draw near to all of us who call ourselves Americans. Half of us struggle to associate with, understand or come together meaningfully with the other half of us. Loving God, we are tearing ourselves apart. May You provide us with tools, skills and conviction to pursue the hard work involved with lifting up our own collective well-being.
May we seek to understand before being understood. May we not forsake grace for others and ourselves. May we not forsake forgiveness for others and ourselves. May we allow our imaginations to offer us a humane narrative of our American neighbors. These are tasks which Christians and many people of faith are invited to take on as an essential faith practice. May we all be so bold to lean into such values at such a crucial moment.
Help us, God, in a moment rife with hurt and fear and indignance, to pursue what is right without giving up on treating humans with dignity as a core principle of American life, no matter who they are, what their role is or where they come from.
God, please forgive us where we come up short in such hard times. Help us to persevere as peacebuilders, and to not mistake the hard work of loving our neighbor as something optional, especially when it lies at the root of the division and injustices leaving each “side” downtrodden. Seeking what is humane among us works to surface more clarity and unity, and helps those without our best interest at heart to lose grip on power over us. Seeking to care for neighbor expresses and nurtures a power that cannot be taken from us: the power in how we choose to regard ourselves and others, and in how we embody the kind of community we wish to see our locales and our nation to become.
Help us to take heart and to listen deeply and doubly, and when speaking, to speak truth in humility, and to do so with the lens of Christ.
Amen.