An American Prayer

Dear God,

It is me.  I am feeling small and shaken today.   As you know, there are powerful people calling my home, and one of your finest creations, a garbage can.  They are threatening its people, your people, with harm and destruction.  These people call so much attention to themselves Lord that I know they must keep you very busy. 

Many of these people call themselves believers.  When they gather, they call it church.  They invoke your name as though they have exclusive rights to you.  While my faith tells me that is not so, sometimes I fear these folks keep you so busy that you can no longer see me.  And so I will try to stand apart today, God, not to rail against what has been given, not to tell you what the Divine Agenda should be, but to reach out and say thank you for all that I have by the tremendous blessing of being born an American.

I thank you for this land mass that is my home, a home that spreads from sea to shining sea within a geographic latitude that provides beautiful weather, flowing rivers, fertile soil, plentiful wildlife, and limited barriers.  I know that so much of the world is constrained by its physical environment, heat, drought, infertile land, limited natural resources…And yet, you gave all of this to me, to Americans. How lucky are we to have it all—purple mountains majesty, fruited plains, the Grand Canyon and National Parks?  You have indeed shed your grace on us. I do see it, God.  I really, really do.

And I thank you for the wisdom, the will, and the resources that created an expansive highway system that allows us to move freely with no border patrols or agents to slow us down or stop us, that give us the ability to enjoy freedom of movement and American road trips.  I believe you gave this to us so that we could connect to one another, see ourselves as neighbors, as the American family.

I thank you for our international friends and allies that extend the American family and that help to keep us safe.  They open their doors so that we might partake of the majesty that exists in their countries.  I thank you for the waterways they share, and the air space they open to American cargo and American travelers.  We don’t ever want to be isolated without that.

I thank you for yellow school buses that take our children to school each day and for the social safety net that keeps American children from having to beg on the streets as so many children around the world must do to survive.

I thank you for public education that nourishes the mind and has grown the American genius, the genius that gave us sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics.  My own father grieved his entire life over the death of his young father from pneumonia in the time before antibiotics.  My mother and her brother suffered polio and lived with the lifelong effects because there were no vaccines.  Thank you, God, for sparing me, and thank you for America's extraordinary public health services.

I thank you for the National Weather Service, the ability of a person to glimpse through God’s eyes and see what’s coming, to predict storms and weather events in time to move people out of harm’s way, and for government  relief programs when the storms have passed.

I thank you for public libraries and universities that make books and knowledge available to everyone who is interested. I thank you for postal workers who dodge raindrops, dogs, and traffic every day to bring news from loved ones, groceries, and medical supplies right to my door. I thank you for the genius of moving pictures and the entertainment industry, the magic of Disney, public television, public radio, Big Bird, Elmo, and Mr. Rogers.   And I thank you for all of the other American mothers and fathers of invention who gave us the Ferris wheel, chocolate chip cookies, dental floss, zippers, hearing aids, cardiac defibrillators, traffic lights, chemotherapy, video games, computers, air conditioning, rubber, peanuts, sweet potatoes and crop rotation, bifocals, telephones, cortisone, air travel, electric power distribution, light bulbs, and so much more.

Thank you, God, for all of the people, my own grandparents included, who came to the United States from faraway places in search of a better life in this marvelous country.  I know they were grateful. I hope you are proud of their effort and hard work, their tremendous contribution to America’s greatness.  I know that I am.

Thanksgiving Day is coming, God, but please know that I am not thankful just one day a year.  I am awestruck and grateful each morning when I arise in this land of the free.  Please help me to be brave.

Amen.
​
PS:  And, please, God, make America grateful again.