Sending Prayer

It has been nearly 24 hours and I find myself still strangely moved by the Sending Prayer and Blessing at the end of yesterday’s worship service at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, here in Raleigh.  Maybe it is the fact that it was Martin Luther King’s birthday, maybe it is part of the anxiety and foreboding that I feel about the next four years that our nation faces but I cannot put it down.

Let us imagine, with God, a circle of compassion,
      No one standing outside that circle.
We move ourselves closer to the margins
      So, that the margins themselves will be erased.
We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied.
      We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless 
      and the voiceless.

At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out.

     We stand with the persecuted 
     so that the persecution will stop.
We place ourselves next to the disposable.
     So that the day will come 
     when we stop throwing people away.
And may the grace of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Bless us in this work.

Thank you God, for giving me this New Year’s resolution reformation.  Let it shape my life, so that through me the lives of others will be transformed this year and all the years of my life.