Prayer Offered for February 22, 2018

At the beginning of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” as an epigraph:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

God of Mercy and compassion, in the midst of broken and deferred dreams, we ask for the grace and courage to face the injustices of our time with strength and integrity for the sake of the common good and the future of our children.  We ask this in your name.—AMEN.