God.

We know that we are not like each other.

We look different, we do different things, we feel different feelings.
We confess that often, we wish you had made us like someone else.
We confess that often, we wish you had made other people like us.
And we acknowledge that we just wish that people liked us. And that we liked them.

It’s harder, gap between who we are and who others are,
when we are in moments of pain and uncertainty.

Fear and sickness both make our thinking and feeling hard.
We are not who we want to be.
We react how we wish we didn’t.

We confess.

God, here’s what we ask.
We ask you to help us understand the differences that you created,
that you built into us to be helpful for each other
to be challenging to each other
to learn to be loving of each other.

Help us suffer with those who suffer.
Help us honor those who are being honored.
Help us be a body that cares for itself
Rather than a body that destroys itself.

Help us proclaim your truth
rather than our divisions.

Help us love as you have loved.
Help us know your love.

We ask this of you God, because Jesus invited us to.

Amen.