a prayer for our nation

 Dear God,

I know You were there at the founding of our nation. The founding fathers weren't perfect by any means, but they did their best to consult You at every step. They wanted to please You, to create a nation that would serve as Your light to the world. For generations, that was the case. Our nation sat as a beacon on the hill, a light in the dark, salt to preserve and help heal a broken world. We have been seen by the rest of the world as a Christian nation, and for the majority of the life of our nation, that's what we've tried to be. As a nation, we claimed Your promises for ourselves--we claimed the covenant.

Like the founding fathers, we weren't perfect. We made wrong choices. We promoted attitudes and actions that went against Your plan, even when we knew better. We started moving further from Your plan, pushing You aside. We demanded that people should abandon their faith when they entered the public square--insisting that freedom of religion meant freedom from religion instead. We pushed You out of our schools, out of our courtrooms. We insisted that we could take care of ourselves and pushed You away from our families, deciding that we didn't have to follow Your plan. After all, we know better than You do how best to run our lives. We've moved so far away from everything You wanted for us.

We broke the covenant.

Father, we don't deserve Your blessings. We have purposefully pushed You out of the very fabric of our nation, and now we wonder why it's all unraveling. We've stared You in the face and demanded that You give us our own way, like petulant children. And it seems like You have. You've taken a step back and let us have what we want.

And somehow, as everything is falling apart around us, spiraling into chaos and discord, we have the delusional idea that we are getting better.

Our families are disintegrating. Fathers are absent, which leads to broken families and broken kids who end up breaking laws and finding themselves in dark places. We've made the decision on our own that Your design for marriage is outdated--it doesn't matter if children have a mother and a father; they can have two of each (or even multiple of each), even in the face of all the evidence that shows those situations just lead to more brokenness. Instead of teaching our children that they have inherent worth as Your creation, we've told them that their worth is tied up in their identity, and that their identity is something that can and should change from one moment to the next.

God, please forgive us for not standing up for You. Please forgive us for staying silent as You've been pushed aside. We've sat by as Your word has been twisted to fit an evil agenda. The enemy has been on the attack, and we've been cowards. We've watched as the nation founded on Your word has been changed into something that totally goes against Your word, and we've done nothing about it.

Father, please forgive us. We don't deserve Your blessings, but in this moment we beg for Your mercy. We fall before You in brokenness and humility, knowing that we don't deserve mercy--but that's the amazing thing about You. When we don't deserve it--when we turn our backs on You and demand our own way and push You aside and break our promises--You keep Yours. You promise mercy and grace to the undeserving, to the broken people like us.

"if my people, who are called by my name,
will humble themselves and pray and seek my face
and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven,
and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
(2 Chronicles 7:14)