Written January 1-6, 2021

Good and Gracious Father. You are maker and creator of all that is good. You are omnipresent (everywhere at the same time- Isaiah 57:15) which is hard to believe and to understand, but at the same time experienced daily. You provide hope to the widow in India while also providing peace to the grieving family in Mexico at the same moment. You are called upon in Canada by a victim of sexual abuse while answering a prayer for discernment for a student in Australia. You are listening to the prayer being read by a group of weary nurses in Charlotte while providing grace and comfort to the mother who has lost another son to gun violence in Tennessee. At the same time you are causing things to happen all over so that your perfect will (which doesn’t always look like our perfect to us) will be accomplished. You are with the lonely, with the displaced, with the oppressed, with the fearful, and with the sick. And while people are experiencing these things you are making all things good (Romans 8:28).

Thank you, Father, for what you have accomplished in 2020. It is hard to know what that looks like on the global scale. I can see evidence in my own life and in the lives of those close to me. We have caught glimpses of these good things in the news, but you have not been given the glory for much. Thank you God for how you have brought small groups of people together, for causing our desire to gather and be in community to grow and show us our need for others while deepening our relationships with a small few over the past year. Thank you for the conviction to strive to love all people and see everyone as a child of God, to overcome the tendency toward only those who look like us or seem more similar to us. Thank you for the voices that were heard that have long been silenced. Thank you for things that stay the same and things that change. Thank you for new seasons and glimpses of hope in past seasons. Thank you for the moments to appreciate what we have and to learn that what we have is a gift.

We are so hungry for hope, God. We long for new times, or to go back to the way it was before 2020. I pray against false hope. If we put all our hope in new leaders, then we will inevitably be disappointed and cast onto them a burden much too heavy. If we put all our hope in a vaccine, then we will again be let down by all the mishaps that come with something man-made. If we put all our hope in a movement, in a new relationship, in a new church, in a new school, in a new season, in a new year, then we will be let down. We will fight in vain for control over something we have no control over. We will hold things too tightly, we will lose, we will be let down, we will be right back at the same place in 2022 with a fresh sense of despair hoping in all the wrong things for a better year.

God, I pray for your church – for the brothers and sisters all over the world united by faith in you by your Spirit. May our number one hope still be in your promises, your will. May we love with a Christ-like love. May we see the stranger, the neighbor, the family member, as you see them. May we be reminded more frequently that all people are created in your image. And that it is not a spectrum – we are all created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26 and James 3:9 (great passage on this reminder)).

Wherever we stand in agreement (or disagreement) with our leaders, help us to respect them as people and come before you in prayer for them throughout this year. You did not stand passively by this past year. You are at work — and maybe it’s not in the ways we expected you to or wanted you to — and maybe it is. Either way, help us trust your perfect will and pray that our leaders at the city, state, and national level would love you, trust you, and seek you for discernment on how to lead. We pray that you would raise up a group of leaders, with convictions that you gave them, that would be light in the dark areas of policy and government. May they be people who truly love people and want to make much of you.

And wherever we disagree with our leaders, our church members, our neighbors, help us. Help us know how to speak out of our convictions in a way that is not self-seeking or harmful or harsh. Help us to know when and how to speak up and when to acknowledge inside that our way may not be the only way, and that’s okay too. Help us to be quicker to listen and ask questions, giving our church family the benefit of the doubt, and slower to judge. Please help us not entertain judgements about our fellow brothers and sisters in the pew — 2020 brought a whole host of other ideas and beliefs to disagree with each other about. May your people see a renewed unity in community this year. And thank you God for how you have guided church leadership this past year as they lead congregations.

In 2021, by your Spirit and according to your perfect will, may we be more appreciative, quicker to listen, slower to speak, eager to be kind, surrenderers of pride, self-examiners and confessors of our own sin, searchers and speakers of truth, time givers, encouragers, and people who love all people — sharing the saving work of our Lord because being yours is truly the most hope-filled, beautiful, freeing thing to ever happen to us. All Glory be to Christ!

Amen