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A Prayer to End All Wars
God of every nation,
Breath within every living soul,
You who formed us from the same dust
and placed within us the same fragile heart,
hear the cry of your children.
The earth trembles beneath the weight of our violence.
Cities burn.
Fields meant for harvest are soaked with tears.
Mothers cradle photographs instead of their children.
Fathers stand in silence before freshly turned soil.
And across the world the grieving ask the same question,
How long?
Merciful God,
we confess what we have done to one another.
We have chosen power over compassion,
profit over human life,
revenge over mercy.
We have told ourselves stories that make enemies of neighbors,
and in doing so we have forgotten
that every face bears your image.
Break the machinery of war, O Lord.
Unravel the hands that profit from bloodshed.
Confound the plans of those who trade human lives for strategy.
Trouble the sleep of leaders who send the young to die
while they remain far from the fire.
Turn the hearts of nations.
Let swords fall from tired hands.
Let missiles rust in their silos.
Let soldiers walk home to their families
under skies that no longer thunder with fear.
Teach us again the courage of peace.
The quiet bravery of forgiveness.
The holy discipline of seeing Christ
in the stranger,
in the refugee,
in the enemy we were taught to hate.
Raise up peacemakers in every land.
Prophets who refuse the language of domination.
Mothers and fathers who will no longer offer their children
to the altar of empire.
And where the wounds of war already scar the earth,
send your healing.
Comfort the grieving.
Strengthen the weary.
Hold the traumatized and the displaced.
Plant seeds of mercy in the ruins
so that even in the ashes
new life may grow.
God of justice and peace,
bend the arc of our history away from destruction
and toward the day your prophets promised,
when nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
and no one shall learn war anymore.
Until that day,
make us stubborn in hope,
brave in compassion,
and relentless in the work of peace.
We ask this in the name of the Prince of Peace,
who disarmed hatred with love
and showed us another way.
Amen.
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