Editor’s Note: This week we are simply posting a few prayers by saints as we cry out, asking God to do what we cannot. Prayer: A Lament by Jamie Dunlop.
We lament Injustice
- George Floyd – that he was robbed of his life tragically and cruelly and unjustly.
- Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and others whose names we knew but have forgotten and others whose names we never heard of and yet others whose names you alone know.
- The fact that there is so much injustice in this world we cannot even keep track of it all.
- Those in our city whose businesses and workplaces have been vandalized and looted. Injustice too people like our own sister C.T. who discovered Monday morning she no longer had a job because the office where she worked had been destroyed.
- Injustice of the pandemic—that it is the most vulnerable to pay the highest price.
We lament the fear that so many feel in our city—and that for many of our minority brothers and sisters, these events have only brought to the surface fear they address on a daily basis.
We lament—especially in the killing of George Floyd—that injustice is in places of authority. Like you say in Psalm 94:20: “those who frame injustice by statute”. We lament that at times injustice is embedded in places of authority. We lament how this kind of injustice turns your blessing into a curse.
We lament that good authority in times like this is given a bad name. That those who put their very lives on the line to protect us are slandered and threatened and even killed.
We lament a history that compounds injustice and makes it so seemingly difficult for us to address. The history of our city, of our country—sin that leads to sin that leads to sin that leads to sin—a chain that goes all the way back to Adam. Sin that brought death and hatred and disease.
We lament how far short human government falls from your own good and just government it should reflect. These evils we have been talking about are an indictment of human government, and we lament our weakness.
We lament the hatred of man for man. Hatred of those who are made in your image. Even hatred in response to hatred.
We lament the consequences of that hate for both the haters and the hated and the world that surrounds them.
We lament that we often do not know what to do in response to the evils around us. The evils of the pandemic, the evils of injustice. We desire to do what is good but there seems to be no ability to do it.
We lament that so many in our country see the injustice around us as proof that the Christian principles that guided so much of the civil rights movement were empty and foolish and naïve. We lament that your truth is under attack.
We lament that calls for justice will be answered by a good and just God—the God of vengeance as we saw in verse 1—and that for those who are not in Christ, those who call for justice will be swept away in their own sin when it comes. We know you are good, but this truth is so hard to comprehend.
We lament that the faith of so many who follow you is suffering. We lament that death, and injustice, and turmoil around us leaves us doubting your goodness and your sovereign rule. We lament that our faith is weak and wanting.
Come, Lord Jesus.
