Our national anxiety...
I offer up this prayer for us all today. It's from This Day, A Wesleyan Way of Prayer:
O Righteous Ruler of the Universe:
We give you thanks for the heritage and hope of our own country,
as people in every place give thanks for their homelands.
When, as a nation, we walk in your way, grant us to continue in your will.
When, as a people, we fail you, correct us, gently yet without compromise.
Enable those who govern us to seek the welfare not only of ourselves and of all people who share this planet with us but also the welfare of our children and our children's children, that they may share the gifts we treasure, that they may dwell in unity and without fear from generation to generation.
Strengthen our resolve to live up to those national ideals whose virtues we proclaim but whose practice we have not yet achieved.
Teach us justice, kindness, and humility in your presence.
Speedily bring to us and to all your people that peace which is rooted in integrity, which flowers forth as wholeness.
For you, O God, are our Peace. Amen.