A Prayer in observance of Juneteenth, written for the 2019 Juneteenth Breakfast of Prayer at Meadowbrook United Methodist Church in Fort Worth, Texas:
Dear Gracious God of all people, all times, all places, and all faithfulness,
We give you thanks for this day and for the gift of freedom we all enjoy to come and dwell together in unity as brothers and sisters, family and friends, fellow children and co-heirs in your beautiful and righteous House.
As we gather here to commemorate Juneteenth we are grateful for its important significance and principal reminder: That the war did not end until everyone heard the good news — that slavery was indeed the end cause of so much bloodshed and devastation in our land, that it had been abolished by the virtue of a “government of the people and by the people and for the people”, and that all people in these United States are now and are to ever hence be free.
We invoke your presence here today. We know, LORD, it is true what has often been said, “none of us are free until all are free.” So stir us with your holy provocation that we might continue to seek liberty and justice for all in this nation, dedicating ourselves to the ongoing work of undoing slavery’s horrific legacy and the legacy of its ugly scions Jim Crow, segregation, mass incarceration, racism, and Sunday morning separation. Give us the strength, the courage, and the burden of spirit to continue the efforts of those who came and suffered before us, that we might truly be a land where all our family members may delight in the crystal fountain of freedom. Give us a spirit of justice, and equity and simple fairness that we, your children, might be free not only in part but in whole. Not only in word but in fact. May we, all your beloved children, one day — soon — be free; and may we be free indeed.
We ask these things in the name of the one who “loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,” and whose “truth is still marching on”, Christ Jesus our Lord himself, our great emancipator. Amen.
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