What we pray for
I appreciated Peter Marty’s column in the September issue (“All we may become”). What struck me most was the paragraph about humans angling to get something from Jesus and using prayer as a tool for “doing or getting [instead of] being and becoming.”
This has long been my lament about the prayers of the people in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s worship book. We pray each Sunday for God to improve the climate, the environment, the hearts of leaders, and so on. I feel we should be praying for strength and courage to improve the climate, to stand up for the environment, to speak up against tyrants and in support of those who suffer at their hands. “God’s work, our hands” is a motto of the ELCA—so should we not be praying that our work shows more of God’s love in the world?
—Brenda Morris
Winchester, VA
