Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us, for we have endured no end of contempt. We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant, of contempt from the proud. - Psalm 123:3-4 (NIV) First of all: Happy Friday the 13th after a consequential American election! Is today a scary, superstitious day – serene? As always, I’m writing from the past. What has happened, peeps? Did one or the other candidate win in a landslide? Is the election still being contested? Did the Supreme Court vote in our next president, winning in a lopsided contest between 6 lifelong appointees over 52 million citizens? Whatever has happened between my penning and your reading, I have the same hopes. I hope we will keep fighting for the society we want to live in, and hold our elected leaders accountable for a truly radical vision of Kindom where the most vulnerable and marginalized come into power and plenty. I hope we will keep fiercely tending the earth, pumping the brakes on our gas-guzzling before we drive right over the cliff. And I hope that whoever is leading us does so with humility and a desire to serve every one of us, not just the people who voted for them. We are more polarized than ever, as a people, but there is a way back to each other. It depends upon us being the kind of people who can have direct, compassionate communication with those who think differently from us … but more than this, it depends upon those who seek to govern treating every one of us with dignity and respect. As if our voices, our needs, our longings, our strengths and frailties, our work, our bodily autonomy, our disabilities, our marriages, our lives matter. Prayer God, save us from public ridicule by the arrogant, and the contempt of the proud and powerful. We will be ungovernable until our government treats every human being as Your own beloved child.
About the Author Molly Baskette is Senior Minister of First Congregational Church UCC in Berkeley, California, and the author of the best-selling Real Good Church, Standing Naked Before God, and her newest baby, Bless This Mess: A Modern Guide to Faith and Parenting in a Chaotic World.
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