This prayer comes from the hearts of our pastors and staff leadership in response to the events unfold in our nation’s capital today. 
 
God of us all, we lift up our nation before you this day.  We cherish this country for the beacon of light it has been to other people who have looked to it as a land of freedom and peace and hope.  We pray that that our self-avowed ideals will continue to hold fast and not fail in the face of turmoil and dissent.  We also freely confess that we have not always lived up to our ideals and self-conceptions and ask your mercy upon us as individuals and as a nation.
 
We are praying, dear God, that the protests in our capital will not escalate into further violence and will not spread into the streets of our cities already stretched to their limits.  We especially pray for the police, the guards, the first responders and all who put themselves in harm’s way, often literally standing between peaceful protest and violence.  We pray that the anger and resentment of those who protest would find expression in ways that do not threaten life and devolve into acts of terror.
 
Lord, let us be the ones who reach out across ideologies, party-lines, distrust, philosophical differences, and old grudges so that we might remember once again what binds us together—as citizens, people, human beings—that we are all your precious children and all are created in your image.  Turn this nation once again into those things, those notions, those promises upon which it was born: life, liberty, wholeness and freedom.  We ask in and through your Spirit and the Prince of Peace.  Amen.