Evening Prayer: Sovereign


We name you king, Lord, sovereign.
We trust you, except
sometimes we do not.
We take matters into our own hands.

We fashion power and authority and sovereignty;
enforced by law and bureaucracy and weapons,
we think to make ourselves safe.
And then learn, staggeringly,
how insufficient is our product,
how thin is our law,
how ineffective is our bureaucracy,
how impotent our weapons.

We are driven back to you - your will,
your purpose,
your requirements:
care for land
care for neighbor
care for future.

We name you king, Lord, sovereign -
so undemocratic!
and in naming become aware of our status
before you . . . loved, sent, summoned.
We pray in the name of the loved, sent, summoned Jesus.


(Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People, 41)

Comments