Dear God, we hear of peace only as a faraway dream;
we long for it in our lives, in the lives of our families,
our friends, and our countries.
But with each passing day
the prospect for peace
seems to be increasingly tantalizing.
Restlessness seems to be
the order of our present existence:
our inner restlessness rooted in various anxieties,
our societal restlessness rooted in
the evils that go on around us,
the restlessness of our world
plagued by conflicts of all sorts.

Dear God, we hear of peace only as a dream;
a dream we would love to be part of,
a dream we long to have in our hearts, in our neighborhoods,
in our countries, and even in our churches.

We pray this morning, dear God,
that we may experience that peace
that passes all understanding,
we pray, O God, that we may experience You,
the Peace of the world.

Penetrate the grieving heart,
accompany the lonely one,
remember the forgotten,
reclaim the strayed,
make music out of the
disharmony of conflict and chaos.
Let our restless hearts rest in you, O God.
This we pray in the name of the Christ,
who beckons us into the vision of Peace.

Amen