Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

Dear God, I just read an editorial about the unity/disunity in our country. It mentioned that we are descending into tribalism within our society and see other groups with differing opinions in our societies not so much as fellow Americans with different opinions, but as enemies who must be vanquished, even if the are fellow Americans. I started to wonder if that same thing doesn’t start to have some truth to it when it comes to members of churches too.

I found one set of statistics interesting. In 1994, apparently Republicans and Democrats saw each other strongly unfavorably at rates of 17% and 16%, respectively. Now those numbers are 43% and 38%. We have certainly lost a common enemy (in the country, we can’t even agree about whether or not Russia is the enemy, and in churches, we have lost sight of Satan as our enemy) and started to turn on those who disagree with us.

Father, taking this verse, I guess my desire is that you would help me to remember that life is short, make me an instrument of your peace, and the help us all to find common positive goals around which we all can rally. Unite us as a nation through constructive dialogue. I don’t want a prayer for unity to mean you have to give us enemies to achieve it. I’m hopeful (although not confident) that we can unite through positive forces and that you haven’t designed us to always need negative forces to unite us.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen