Pastoral Prayer…For Those In Harm’s Way

By the Rev. William G. Sinkford, 3/20/03
President, Unitarian Universalist Association

We encourage your congregation to incorporate this prayer into its Sunday worship service, drawing strength from the fact that Unitarian Universalists all over the world will be united as a people during worship.

Please enter the space of silence and honesty, which is known by many names.

Let us open our hearts in prayer.

On this day, as US bombs are falling on Baghdad, we pray for many people, many things. Our concerns are for the safety of the American citizen soldiers who stand in harm’s way. Though there is disagreement about the wisdom of this war, there is no disagreement about our support for the women and men who must engage in it. Let us not confuse our feelings about those who made the decision for war with our steadfast support for those who are called to make war itself. So let us pray as one people for our soldiers.

We pray, too, for the families of those in uniform. Those loved ones wait and pray most earnestly for their safe return. Our thoughts are with the children, for whom no war could be understood to matter more than a mother or father’s life. Let our love and support be with them as well.

We pray also for the people of Iraq, especially the innocent children, who will be harmed by this war, and for all the people of Iraq, whose lives will be disrupted and changed by our actions. May this war, when the hostilities end, help them find greater freedom and happiness, and not more suffering and loss.

And we pray for our world, a world in need of paths to peace. We pray for a world in which we might learn that differences of faith, of race, of nation, need not separate us. We pray that this world, which may be further divided by this war, can become one where there is less hatred and more understanding.

This war has put us all in harm’s way, and we all stand, together now, on fragile ground in this time of unrest. There is only one destiny on this small blue planet, and there are no other hands but ours. So let us, as one people, pray, finally, for the courage and the wisdom to find a path that leads to both peace and justice.

May it be so.

Amen