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Lament

 


Daniel 9:4

And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments

 

Thought for the day – Our lament

Daniel’s prayer today is a lament. It’s cry of shame for what has gone before and a shout for God to intervene and restore Jerusalem. And it reminds me of a song I love called Lament by a South African group called Friends First, which was written during the apartheid years of South Africa. So rather than wax lyrical, here are the lyrics. Make it your prayer today.

 

O Lord our God who keeps his covenant of love,

we have sinned and done wrong.

We have turned away from your righteousness,

our ears have been closed to your command.


The land is divided and the people are apart, 

The nation is covered in shame.

We have resisted your power and your grace,

We have not acknowledged your name.


Our leaders and our fathers have not walked in your ways,

We are an object of scorn.

Disaster has come aupon the land of our birth,

Africa lies broken and torn.


But now O Lord, now O Lord our God,

Turn away your anger from this land.

Hear O God, and heed our prayer,

In mercy stretch out your healing hand.

O Lord listen, O Lord forgive,

O Lord heal our land.

Do not delay, remove our shame,

For your city and your people beg of you.

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


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