Remind us that our true citizenship is in a kingdom the world cannot see.

First United Methodist Church (Johnson City, Tennessee) is blessed with three ministers carrying individual skills that blanket the needs of our congregation.

From kids’ sermons to elder care, they cover all the bases using an entourage of support from a wonderful spirit-lead staff.

Last Sunday, one of them spoke a prayer that I believed worthy of publication. It was difficult to not shout AMEN in the middle of its delivery.

So I’m sharing it with you in case one third of your life — the spiritual aspect — is not locked up in closet somewhere reading Project 2025.

Thank you, Reverend Steve Reis, for heartfelt words to carry us forward. We are lucky, indeed, to have this type of connection to The Way that will persist throughout eternity while every imagined form of evil rises and falls to the gravity of faith-in-action.

Carry this with you throughout the week and let it lift you up when the evil hits your nostrils once again. And you know it will.

Oh God, our creator,

We sing joyfully, and cry out to you, the rock of our salvation.

We come before you with songs of praise because you are the great God, the king over all Gods.

Your hands hold the depths of the earth and you own the tops of the mountains.

The sea and the land belong to you because you formed them by hand.

We bow down in worship, for out of your great love you also created us.

You are our God and we are the people you shepherd, the sheep in your hands (Ps. 95:1-7).

So Lord we ask that you clothes us with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Col. 3:12).

Teach us not to look only to our own interests, but to the interests of others: All the people you created in your image whom you shepherd and hold in your hands (Phil. 2:4).

Your creation is suffering because of our sin and we ask you to bring healing and wholeness.

Make us a people through which that transformation comes.

Teach us to see the needs of the people and the earth around us and to be a source of your marvelous light in a dark world.

Where there is violence and war, bring peace and healing.

Beat our swords into plowshares.

Transform our weapons of destruction into tools of life. Let not nation raise arms against nation nor learn war anymore.

Where the earth, the creation of your hands, is being destroyed and exploited, bring restoration.

Teach us to be good stewards of all you have given us.

Where there is loneliness and despair, where there is grief and loss, bring comfort and community.

Strengthen us to carry one another’s burdens.

Teach us to abide with one another as you abide with us.

Where innocent lives are being taken because of firearms in the hands of evil, bring a righteous anger and an inability to be complacent.

Don’t let the cries of children gunned down during prayer fall on deaf ears.

Where facts are ignored and willful ignorance puts our collective health and well-being at risk, bring your truth.

Give us wisdom to seek the advice and treatment of those who have devoted their lives to public health and medicine.

Where there is injustice and oppression, in whatever forms they present themselves, empower us to resist and to live as children of your kingdom.

Remind us that our true citizenship is in a kingdom the world can’t see.

Teach us to live today, like the community we will be when your kingdom comes.

Let the love displayed in you, Triune God, be our guiding ethic and the source of the world’s healing.

We pray this in the name of your son Jesus who taught us to pray:

Our Father, which art in heaven,Hallowed be thy Name.Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.