A Prayer For Memorial Day Weekend

 

 

ALMIGHTY God, giver and sustainer of life and liberty, we bow our heads in honor and memory of all those who in past wars paid the ultimate sacrifice, that we might enjoy the blessings of governing our own land, according to our own laws and by our own people. We remember not only those who left their homes never to come back again, but also the mothers in whose windows hangs a gold star; and the tens of thousands of wives who said good bye one last time; and for the children, whose daddies never got to hold their son or daughter again.

 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us, lest we forget.  Lest we forget the noble efforts of both the past and the present to free the enslaved, to maintain order, to promote social justice, yes, and to preserve our land from terrorism and all who would take from us our freedom of thought, our freedom of expression, our freedom of worship and our freedom of government.

 

And in our plea to sanctify to our memories the price that has been paid for our way of life, let us remember those who even now are far from home and loved ones; those men and women who have voluntarily consented to fight for their country in a war unlike any we have fought before.  Protect them and return them safe to their homes and their loved ones.  We pray for those who will not be so fortunate, those who may not pay with their lives, but will return disabled, dismembered and disfigured; those who have escaped death but are left with the awful memories of war.

 

We pray for the hundreds of children who are left fatherless because of war or who must learn to cope with a father much unlike the one they knew before he went to war.  The ravage of war is far reaching and the price that is extracted is far beyond our ability to comprehend.  Therefore we pray for peace, peace in our time, so that the sacrifices even now may not be in vain.  We ask that if it be Your will You will bring men to the table of reconciliation that differences may be resolved and that the world might live in peace.

 

We close our pray with the prayer of Francis of Assisi: “Lord, make us instruments of Your peace.  Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light; where there is sickness, health; where there is sadness, joy.  Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.   

This we pray in Jesus name.        Amen