A Thanksgiving Prayer for Peace

Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner
President, Skinner Leadership Institute, www.skinnerleadership.org

Our Lord and our God, in this Thanksgiving season, with war on too many shores and distant lands, we pause to give thanks for our brave men and women in harms way in Iraq and Afghanistan. We thank you for their families and loved ones from whom they are separated as they fight for what they believe is right even as our nation debates the need for continued war. We thank and praise you for the families of those who have lost their lives in war and that your unconditional love and sustaining presence would ease their loss and their pain.

We pray a prayer of healing and restoration for the millions who have been emotional damaged, suicidal, and spiritually wounded by the horrors of war who return home unable to function in a civilian environment.

We especially pray for those veterans who now face unemployment, financial distress, and even homelessness in a nation of plenty despite our current financial setbacks. We ask that you move on our government officials dealing with veterans affairs provoking them to move as speedily in caring for veterans as our nation moved in sending them to war. Forgive us for neglecting those who sacrificed their lives for what they believed was a righteous cause.

And finally, dear Lord, as we contemplate the thousands of lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan; or those hurt or killed in Pakistan, we pray for peace, for you are still the Great Peacemaker.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us countless times by his own example, love is still greater than hate; and peace is more desirable than war for it reminds us of Jesus’ powerful words in the Gospel of Matthew:
“You’re blessed when you show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.” (The Message Bible). Amen.