For January 17, 2021 Prayer for Peace (from Worship Helps) and Peace Moment with introduction
Introduction
Each week during Advent and beyond we will hear a Peace Moment in addition to the prayer for peace. Hopefully you will be blessed with these devotional thoughts. This week’s Peace Moment is by Claudia Schooler.
Here I Am (Racial Justice Day) 1 Samuel 3:1-20
The young boy Samuel, promised to God from before his birth, was serving in the Temple. He assisted an aging and blind priest named Eli. One night Samuel heard a voice calling his name. Assuming it was Eli, Samuel ran to his bedside. “Here I am, for you called me.” Eli told Samuel to go lie down for he had not called him. When the same thing happened twice more, Eli discerned that perhaps God was calling to the boy. He instructed his young helper to invite the voice to speak if he heard it again. This was to become Samuel’s first prophetic experience. The writer of Samuel tells us that before this, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” (1 Samuel 3:7) Samuel needed the wisdom and guidance of the older, experienced Eli to recognize and know how to respond to God’s call.
Today we observe racial justice day. And tomorrow we recognize perhaps the best known leader of the American civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King had many followers. He also had important mentors. One of his teachers at Boston University was Howard Thurman. Thurman did more to introduce the concept of non-violence than perhaps any other leader. And in this he had his own mentor, Mahatma Gandhi.
However it was after King’s university days were past that the most decisive incident between him and Howard Thurman occurred. In 1958 at a book signing, Martin Luther King Jr. was stabbed by a disturbed young woman. As he lay in the hospital recovering from the life threatening injury, Howard Thurman came to visit. He advised the wounded civil rights leader to slow down, take extra time to recuperate. And only after meditating on the purpose of his life should he move ahead. Martin heeded the advice.
During the rest of his life – ten more years – Dr King was known to read Howard Thurman’s books and quote him extensively in his sermons and speeches. Like Eli and Samuel, Howard Thurman helped Martin Luther King Jr. to stop, listen and recognize God’s call.
Who is your Eli? . . . And who needs to hear your discerning words?
Prayer for Peace
Light the Peace Candle.
Fount of Love and Well of Peace,
We thirst for your presence as we wander in a violent desert land. As children are gunned down and nations war, we cry for your peace. You have beautifully created us all, we are fearfully and wonderfully made: all sizes, shapes, and personalities. What blasphemy kills based on the differences you have created? What iniquity terrorizes through the barrel of a gun? Will warring madness never cease? We raise a petition for peace in your presence. Oh God, let us carry the banner of your peace with holy courage to the rulers of the nations. Hear our prayer and inspire our actions in accordance with your divine will, we pray. Amen.
Source of Information
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-theologian-helped-mlk-see-value-nonviolence-180967821/