Prayer “While Reading the News”

WHILE READING THE NEWS

I thank you

for this net that sweeps all waters

and brings me news of all the daily life

of all my neighbors

everywhere in the world.

Make me compassionate,

O God of all mercies,

with all my neighbors’ sufferings.

Teach me to know and feel

that distant anguish is

as aching as my own.

Teach me to pray,

“Thy kingdom come!”

as widely as Your Son

has willed it and meant it.

Teach me to do

what I can and must do

for all men.

Teach me long-reaching charity.

Give me faith to know,

when news is black as ink,

that Your hand is guiding all,

obscurely and unfathomably

but surely, surely

toward Your goal;

that when the world shakes

and Satan triumphs with short certainty,

Your Son, Jesus Christ, is Lord of all,

that He, the Lamb slain for our sins,

is opening the seals of Your book

and is working out

Your good and holy will.

Remember in Your mercy

the gatherers and disseminators of the news.

Protect them from all harm.

Keep them

from cynical and cheap success,

from a single taste for disaster,

from considered or deliberate distortion

of the sad and wondrous face of man.

From Pray for Joy, by Martin H. Franzmann (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1970)