What would you pray at the inauguration if you were invited to pray? That question was asked on an email list I’m on.
Bret L. McAtee, a pastor of a CRC in Charlotte Michigan, answered this way:
Most Just and Benevolent God of The Lord Jesus Christ.
We confess this morning that you are the God above all gods – The Creator God of all the earth. You are the one who determines the end from the beginning and you hold the hearts of all potentates in your palm to do with as you please.
We come before you as a people you have repeatedly blessed throughout our history, and we confess that we have sinned repeatedly and high highhandedly done violence against thy tender mercies. Though we Americans are not all Christian we understand that just as you threw out the Canaanites of old from the land for their violation against your just standards so you hold all of us today – Christian and non-Christian alike – accountable for our sins – both public and private.
For the sake of thy Crucified, Resurrected and Ruling Son we pray that you might be pleased to send all of us an awareness, born of thy Spirit, to make us conversant with our sin and idolatry. Be pleased, for the sake of Jesus to cause us to see our wickedness that we might be instructed to flee to Christ who alone is the propitiation for sin and who alone can heal us, our families, our Churches, and our Nation.
Be with our President most Excellent Father. Cause him to lead us in repentance. Where he stands in need of humbling himself before you we pray that you might grant it. Be pleased, we beg of you, to make our President a nursing father to thy Holy Church so that all the people of this Nation might be blessed.
As the Prophet prayed of old so we ask in this invocation, “In wrath remember Mercy.”
Do all this we pray that thy name might be magnified, so that thy Royal Son Jesus may be made known and so that thy present full Kingdom might be increased so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord might cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
In the name of Jesus Christ – the one alone mediator between God and Man – we pray
Amen.
I’m thinking we should all be praying like this even though no one has invited us to offer prayer at the inauguration.
