A Prayer for Our Nation on the Eve of the Election

Lord God, Creator of every nation and Lord of all history,
you formed each human being in your own image
and entrusted to us the care of one another and of the earth you made.
We come before you as citizens of an earthly city
and pilgrims bound for the city that is to come.

We thank you for the gift of self-government,
for the freedom to speak, to assemble and to choose those who will lead us.
We remember those who marched, suffered and died
so that every citizen might cast a vote.
Let us never treat as small what others paid for so dearly.

Send your Holy Spirit upon all who vote.
Form our consciences by your truth, not by fear, resentment or the loyalties of party.
Widen our sight, so that we see human dignity as one seamless garment:
the child waiting to be born and the migrant at our border,
the poor and the hungry, the sick and the aged,
the prisoner and the victim, the worker and the stranger,
and the creation you have given into our keeping.
Keep us from choosing whom to love and whom to forget.

We pray for all who seek public office.
Give them honesty in what they say and humility in what they seek.
For those who win, grant the heart of a servant and not the grasp of a master.
For those who lose, grant grace, and the peace that does not depend on victory.
Remind all of them that authority is a trust held from you,
and that they will give an account of it.

Protect those who make our elections possible:
poll workers and volunteers, clerks and officials, neighbors at folding tables in church halls and school gymnasiums.
Give them integrity, patience and safety,
and give us all the honesty to accept a fair count, whatever it brings.

Forgive us, Lord,
when we have made idols of our politics,
when we have called our neighbors enemies,
when we have spread what we did not know to be true,
when we have hoped for our opponents’ humiliation rather than their good.
Heal the divisions in our families, our congregations and our communities.
Teach us again to do justice, to love goodness and to walk humbly with you.

Whatever the results of Tuesday, keep us from putting our final hope in princes.
Help us seek the welfare of the city where you have placed us,
because our own good is bound up with it.
And make your Church, in all its many members,
a sign of the unity and peace this nation so deeply needs.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

And now, as Christ taught us, we pray together:
Our Father…