A Prayer

Heavenly Father, 

We adore you for you are sovereign and good. The date, 9/11, while it lives in our collective memory like a splinter, serves as a reminder that we are a frail people, easily broken. You, however, are our rock and our shield.

Today, we thank you again for the bravery of those who ran in when everyone else ran out. Men and women who chose to be your hands and feet in a moment of chaos. They brought with them order and for some new life.

Today, we confess our need of vengeance and hatred. Thank you for your grace and forgiveness.

Father, we lift before you the broken families who lost Moms, Dads, Sons, Daughters, Brothers, and Sisters. Would you continue to bind their broken hearts and heal their wounds that run deeper than flesh and blood.

Thank you for caring for us and reminding us on days like today that there are things bigger than our momentary afflictions. Father, you are good and sovereign, caring and personal, may each of us today experience the touch of your hand.

Finally, remind us, that life is brief, that we are but grass. May today serve as a reminder for us to give our lives freely to that which is best.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can bet against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

 As it is written, 

"For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.