God.

Most of us feel like we’re not doing very well.

Like Elijah, we think that everyone is against us

 and everything is going wrong and you aren’t keeping up your part of the bargain.

The part that says “If we do good things you’ll do good to us. And if we do bad things, you’ll ignore them because you love us.”

At the moment, we’re trying to do good things but it seems like all we have is bad news. And so we talk to you like Elijah talked to you.

“I’ve been very zealous,” we say. “But all those other people, they are not.
They are forgetting you.
They are making bad choices.
They are, they are, they are.
But I am, I am, I am.
And now they are trying to kill me.”

You didn’t kill him.
You didn’t scold him.

You gently corrected his view of the situation.
You gave him the next steps forward.

We need your forgiveness for anger and for the ways that we provoke it.

We need your forgiveness for hatred, which has been part of our lives almost as long as there have been humans. And which has been wrong that whole time.

We need your forgiveness for racism of all kinds, but particularly the kind that denies we are each made in your likeness and are loved by you.

People are dying because of anger and hatred and racism.

We ask for your courage and your compassion and your conviction to carry to people in the places we live and work and think.

We need to know you love us still.
We need to know you are in the quiet.
Help us to be quiet enough to meet you there.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen

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Reflecting 1 Kings 19:9-18