Today in our prayers for the people of Comoros.

Prayer for Peace

John S. Wight

O great source of peace that passes all understanding, we are told in scripture that your son wept over a city because the people there made choices that led away from him. Our choices through the centuries have continued to cause such results and block peace for us as individuals, peace with each other, peace between and among the world’s nations, and peace for all your creation.

We ask your forgiveness for the thoughts and behaviors we have chosen, which have resulted in a lack of peace and which, no doubt, have again caused your son to weep.

We thank you for the immeasurable gift of your son. We pray that you might help us better emulate him and, thus, help advance his peace. Please remind us constantly that we are not working nor praying for the kind of peace that the world gives. And we are not working for the simplistic definition of peace—simply for the absence of war. We are working and praying for your true shalom.

You have also encouraged us to not just speak and sing of Zion, but to live, love, and share as Zion, your peaceable kingdom on Earth. Please help us keep that vision foremost in our minds every day.

As we seek this end, we pray that your spirit would bless all those, human and otherwise, who are so adversely affected by our actions, attitudes, and practices that create just the opposite of your shalom.

These things we humbly pray in the name of your son, the true prince of peace, even Jesus the Christ. Amen.