A Prayer of Hope for 2015

For ourselves: Living God, lead us, by your Spirit, deeper into life. Help us love you, ourselves, our family and neighbors, all people including our enemies, and this beautiful earth … being filled more and more with the love that is who you are. Help us not surrender to the temptations that could easily harm us and others. Instead, help us face our challenges and come through them stronger than ever in the year ahead.
Help us set wise goals, solve solvable problems, and engage wisely with predicaments that cannot be solved. Help us learn with curiosity and live reverently with mystery. Help us work wholeheartedly and contribute in our own ways to the common good.
Grant that a year from now, we will be more of all that is good and true to who we can be, and less of all that diminishes the potential of our lives.
For our world: Living God, strengthen those in power who seek to do what is right and good for all – in the arenas of government, religion, media, culture, education, business, science, healthcare, ecology, and all other areas of human endeavor. And challenge the many leaders in our world who lead in ways that harm rather than heal. May Your Spirit empower us all to speak truth to power, and may Your Spirit humble us with our leaders so we all turn toward the justice, joy, and peace of your kingdom.
We pray that this year, the people of our world will more deeply face and repent of the racism that has shaped this world.
We pray that this year, the people of our world will more deeply face and repent of the environmental irresponsibility and economic injustice that threaten our future.
We pray that this year, our churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras, and other faith communities will not put tradition above the call of your Spirit, and will open their hearts to the way of life to which you call all people, which is the way of love.
In the name of Christ, in the power of the Spirit, and to your glory, living God, we pray.