INAUGURATION PRAYER

The immediate furor over the choice of the person who is to deliver an invocation at the Inauguration of President elect Barack Obama seems to have died down. It has left me wondering, “Invoke what precisely: or, more likely, vaguely?"

God’s reassurance that America has a divine mission? God’s promise to rescue us from the mess that is largely our own making? Or a summary of recent history with an agenda for the future, so loved of extempore pray-ers?” ("Lord, you will have read in the Washington Times.......")

Is it too much to hope that something along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer in the paraphrase version given in the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book might be given us?

The Lord's Prayer from the Prayer Book
Of the Anglican Church in New Zealand

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. AMEN.