Professor Brian Bantum of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary shares his prayer for service-members, reflecting the complexity of patriotism, race and national hope:
Gracious God, we find ourselves in a world not of our own making, I prayed. Sometimes it feels like we are creatures utterly different from cardinals or the deer that I see every morning. We so often believe we are free to do and be whatever we imagine for ourselves. But today I am reminded of everything we cannot control, the choices we have to make and live with in a world that offers us so few options.
I do not know what brought these young brown faces to this place of service, but I pray for a world that does not ask them to give up so much of themselves. If they are asked to sacrifice, I pray for a world that asks them to do this for a nation that pours more money into its schools than its weapons, a nation that at the very least invests more in research to cure disease and cultivate everyone’s good health than in oligarchical interests and racist fantasies. I pray for a government that will see them and their families as citizens, as people with possibility regardless of when or how they came to this land. …