We pray for law and order in our land.
We thank you that ours is a nation that values both the benefits of individual freedom and the security of law that orders our life together. We are grateful for dreams we can turn into reality, and for the protections of law that help keep one person’s dreams from being another person’s nightmares. We are grateful for our founders’ gift of a constitution that recognizes both individual rights and social responsibility.
When there is tension between what we want and desire and the wants and desires others cherish, we depend upon sound law to manage that tension fairly and peacefully. We admit we are often blind to laws that favor us at the expense of another, if not in their wording then in how they are interpreted and applied. Free us from treating the law callously or cynically for our own ends. We confess those inequitable laws and the inequitable application of laws that threaten and decay good social order, exacting untold costs upon those they victimize.
Forgive us when deny justice and the legitimate appeal for justice in the name of law and order. Open our nation’s eyes to the reality of the often legalized oppression under which many of us continue to live. Open our ears to the cries of those who face daily discrimination because they belong to groups not valued by the majority or by those in power. Shape our laws and our legal system into instruments of justice as we seek to become a more perfect union in our diversity and difference.
We pray for those who make, enforce, and execute our laws. And we pray for those agitate and work to create a more just order based upon more just laws. Help all of these to work together for the good of all.
We pray for law and order in our land.
Amen.
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