Creator God,
God of life, and provider of new opportunities for wholeness and healing,
I pray to you this day a new prayer.
I have no formulaic incantation or dance for you.
Today, is too important to regurgitate the prayers that worked for my grandfather or for my mother.
While I may pray those ones in my prayer closet, for they are deep, abiding and powerful, I pray today what is on my heart.
I will not pray, "Keep me and mine safe, to include my president,"
Because this is too puny for who I see you to be, O God.
Essentially, I believe you want safety and goodness for President Obama, his family, and for all your children.
O, God, I just want to thank you.
I am privileged to be alive, to be the daughter of daughters of the whip.
I just want to thank you.
I am so glad that my grandmother's eyes, eyes that have seen palpable hate etched on a metal sign over her water fountain, a sign that told her rusty, warm water was what she deserved--
Those eyes will see that you are Sovereign, that you are able, in her "son'' Barack Obama.
So, if you don't do another thing for me, for this I say thank you.
I thank you that you kept her alive long enough to see this day.
I want to thank you that your child fast forwarded his political plans to step up to the plate, because if we ever needed an innovative and God-inspired leader, we sure do need him now.
When bad things happen, religion and religious people have often wrongly assumed that you are off the job, that you are silent for no reason, allowing us to swim through life on our own.
But I know you are here, always here, always providing, always loving, always intervening.
I believe that those of us who decide that we know better shut you down.
You can't work, for we give you no clean hands to function with, and because everyone has not learned how to hear your voice, some assume you must be as untrustworthy and mean-spirited as any human can be.
No.
It is time for a new belief in who you are, Dear God.
Help us to be hopeful, to know in our hearts that you love us, and that you are a Creator and not a destroyer.
Help us to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, for often good people enter evil plots because all the grace has been squeezed out by fear, anger, and doubt.
Today, I pray for President Obama's safety and success with every fiber of my being.
I pray that assassins' bullets won't fly, and that you change and soften the hearts of a society that produce terrorists and assassins who believe that one can kill another that one didn't create,
Who believe that one's ideology can be so important and righteous in one's mind that the way to make change is through violence.
I believe that if our hearts are changed to honor life, and to respect and value others, there will be no bullets.
We will see a generation of peace that many only dreamed would come.
We have seen leadership that only existed for itself, and we are tired.
That kind of selfishness can produce wars on a whim, and not care a bit as long as pockets grow fat.
I pray that his leadership will help each of us as citizens of the world become a part of the solution--for all people.
I hope that such fierce and focused light is shined on oppression, privilege, and evil that finally this country can have real healing to wounds that still gape from neglect and from being ignored.
I pray that we will not let President Obama stand alone so that if he tumbles, he falls down with no support.
Let us rush to his aid, to be a fence all around him, to support him with our prayers and with our right actions to build the Kin-dom of God through our schools and our communities, here and across the world.
Let this inauguration be the beginning of a new way to govern and be governed, a new way to live.
Let this occasion remind us who we are and whose we are.
Lord, this doesn't sound like the prayers I've often heard, but I pray to you with a liberated and open heart, knowing you hear and answer prayer.
This I lift this pray to you as we celebrate this joyous and pivotal occasion of your grace, Amen.
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