Prayer celebrating diversity

By R. Mitch Randall

To the creator of humanity, the sculptor of beauty, and the artist of diversity, your people are before you.

When you reached down from the heavens to mold us from the earth, you created within us a uniqueness and beauty that knows no bounds.

When you knelt down to breath life into our lungs, you passed on your love for us that we might share it with others.

With hate too great a burden to bear, let us learn to embrace each other with love, welcome the stranger with benevolent kindness, and turn an enemy into a friend.

As the creator and artist of diversity, let us not shun your ways. Instead, let us reach out to those who are different than us, demonstrating the love you have instilled in your people.

For indeed we are your people: black, brown, and white; Jew, Muslim, and Christian; Republican, Democrat, and Independent; Gay, Straight, and Transgender.

And with so many others, may we never forget that each of us carry your breath within our lungs. We are your people; your beautiful, conflicted, wonderful, broken, and diverse people.

Only you can make us one, only you can take this large diverse world and bend the arc of the moral universe to justice.

Therefore, we submit ourselves to your will. We fall down at your feet asking forgiveness from our intolerance and hate. Today, may we celebrate the diversity you created in order to practice the love you have shown us.

In your sacred, beautiful, and diverse name, we pray, Amen.

R. Mitch Randall, D.Min., is senior pastor of NorthHaven Church, Norman, Oklahoma. This prayer was offered at the ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Prayer Service hosted by Lynne Miller, mayor of Norman, Okla.

The views expressed are those of the author or authors alone, and not those of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies.