An Invocation for Political Gatherings

While the Simple Truth is that God doesn’t need to be invited into an event to show up, I believe God likes it when we invite His presence.  It’s not required for an omnipresent God, after all, He’s already there if He wants to be, but it is desired by Him and bears fruit for us when we desire it too.  It shows that we honor God, we remember Him, and that we hold ourselves and our conduct to a higher standard, one worthy of His being among us. 

In a day and age where political actions have become coarse, vulgar, an opportunity to oppose and resist and hate our fellow man, I believe Christians especially are admonished to maintain their witness no matter how tempting Satan might make it to make politics our god. 

I watch with a great deal of sadness at people I used to respect for their Christian beliefs fall into this trap, confusing and conflating politics with faith.  National organizations, pastors, churches, seminarians, it doesn’t matter how educated or reputed one is.  The bigger they are the harder they fall away and all the more witness is lost!  And worst of all, Christ and eternity bear the heavy brunt for their failure to listen to and obey Jesus’ command: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21).

I was especially honored when a good friend of mine asked me to write an invocation that would be appropriate for the Republican Assembly of Lake County, IL (RALC).  Given our current climate of politics, I thought you might like to read the invocation I wrote.

Will you please bow your head as I open our time with a moment of prayer?
Eternal Father, Loving God, Creator of everything, and Author of grace everlasting, we invite Your presence upon our gathering today. 

May we find during our time together, a common good, a greater purpose, and many productive means to bring glory to You.  May we be united in heart and mind as we lift our prayer into a realm we cannot see.  We seek Your guidance for the realm in which we live with its daily challenges to our moral trajectory as a nation; assaults upon what we know to be right; ridicule for our belief that life is every bit as precious in the elderly as in the unborn; and relentless threats chipping away at the Constitution, yet we hold it dear because we believe the Founding Fathers had wisdom, Lord, that came from You. 

We trust, Father, that Your Word is true when You said,  “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1). Therefore let us hold our heads high and do Your will gladly. As You have said in teaching us how to pray, that Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Let it be our aim and our hope.

You remind us to give thanks for our daily bread and we ask Your blessing upon the food we will receive.  Bless the hands which prepared it.  Bless our conversation with goodness worthy of Your hearing.  Bless our bodies and strengthen us for the work You have prepared for each of us to do.  When we see mountains beyond our ability, Lord, help us to remember Your Word spoken through Your prophet Zechariah :

‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty. Zechariah 4: 6  

You remind us that mighty mountains will become as level ground.  You take the foundation and complete what You begin, aligned with Your truth.  You remind us not to despise the day of small beginnings as You are the same God who can part any sea, still any storm, and multiply what little we can supply.

We give thanks for the callings upon our lives and may we each welcome any task You give, doing it in Your strength and with all gladness.  You are good, Lord; and we thank You for remembering this nation and for preserving the freedom we have to seek You in life and in prayer.  Bless us now, I pray, honoring Your Holy Name.  Amen.