pastor prayers

There is a little collection of prayers by the Rev. Vivian Pomeroy, my predecessor at the church I currently serve.  It was published by Beacon Press in 1955.  The prayers are some of the best I’ve ever read, and I use them in my own prayer as well as for public prayer in worship.  Today, as I feel surrounded by conversations about how we welcome the stranger — both at Sunday worship and in national and international politics — I share with you one of Mr. Pomeroy’s gems.  Enjoy.

O God, we thank thee that so often we have been happily mistaken in our estimate of other people; that so many times we have been startled by a flash of beauty where we looked only for dullness, and a glow of fire where we expected to find nothing but ashes.  May we be delivered from the folly of demanding that others shall always be at their best, while we forget that we ourselves are not always at our best.  Save us from the false judgment of feeling that others are always as mean as they appeared to be in some perverse moment.  May we be ready to forgive people for what they are, as well as for what they do, since in thy great Being they have as much right to be as we have.  May we not feel too bad about the ways in which others have their good times.  If we put ourselves in the seat of the scornful, may we find it very uncomfortable.  May we never forget that every man is fighting a secret battle.  As for our own lives, may we grow more like what we seem to our best friends and less like what we seem to our worst enemies.  And may we not defraud ourselves by too little giving and forgiving.  Amen.

Amen, indeed.