Soul of the Citizen Tour and Giveaway

 

Soul of the Citizen: Prayers For A Divided Nation

by Mischa Field

Genre: Christian Nonfiction 

Crisis times call for leadership.
Corrupt times call for integrity.
These times call for a move of God, and a move of God calls for you.

Soul of the Citizen: Prayers for a Divided Nation, by Mischa Field, is the cry of a burdened heart refusing to give up on neighbor or neighborhood or nation. It is a collection of prayers for leaders and followers, for parents and children, for shepherds and flocks, and for you and your enemy.

A biblical scribe for modern times, Field offers the reader a word of hope and a call to action. This book is for anyone looking to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God in a time drowning in accusation and ambiguity.

If you long to protect your peace in times of conflict, this book is for you.
If you long to live ethically and authentically in times of struggle, this book is for you.
If you are moved to pray that God would do a new thing in the life of this nation, this book is for you.

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1.

A Prayer for the Soul of the Nation

May we spend more time in prayer than in rage. May we spend more time in meditation than consuming the news. May we trust you with every outcome. Lord, we need your help.

Father, I thank you for clear priorities. May we be clear in putting God over money. 

Jesus was. He said: You cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24 NIV). Forgive us for desperately trying. 

Forgive us for attempting to twist your words to sanctify our greed. This is exactly what you warned us against.

May we be clear in putting the public good before our personal progress. May we protect the individual’s rights without exalting individual wants. 

We see leadership failure throughout the world. May we, in this moment, demonstrate servant leadership by being the church. May we serve, love, intercede, advocate and protect, instead of reveling in justified selfishness, whether for profits or our tribalized interpretations of justice.

As Emma Lazarus said, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

May we never detach from the moment. May we never harden our hearts to the cries of the people. May we repent of our selfishness today. 

We will face many tough decisions in the days ahead. May love drive all of them. Not fear. Not finance.

May our love for you and your people empower us to hear from you and to make decisions that will please you. May our motives be unimpeachable. May our focus be perfect. May our agenda be yours. 

Crisis reveals character. As much as anything, this pandemic has exposed our selfishness. We have infected each other—because my bills were more real than your health, because my lifestyle was more important than your safety, because my recreation was more important than your survival.

And Father, right now, I lift up this nation, and I lift up your people within it as we endure a crisis perhaps like none we’ve ever seen.

I lift up our elders. I pray for their safety. I pray for their peace. May this storm pass over them, Father. May they not find themselves subject to calls to sacrifice their lives for someone else’s bottom line.

I lift up people who have lost their jobs, and may find themselves needing the love of a neighbor that isn’t presently there.

I pray for society today. I pray for the part of us that is increasingly harsh, increasingly callous to the suffering of others. I mourn the death of empathy. May we repent for participating in the hardening of our hearts. 

Forgive us for any person of conscience who has decided if the enemy lacks principles, we should follow suit. Forgive us for letting scoundrels dictate the terms of engagement. Forgive us for practicing situational ethics. Forgive us for being satisfied with the standard of what someone else can prove rather than what we know we did. There is such a thing as honor. 

We should be trustworthy to call our own fouls. We are not. Forgive us for needing a referee in our relationships. We should be able to engage in conflict resolution, arbitration, and compromise. We have, however, become so adept at lying to ourselves that we are all convinced of our own righteousness, alternately baffled and enraged that anyone would think differently than we do. 

Have mercy on any part of us that shrugs at danger far away. Forgive us for ignoring danger in other countries – they’re our neighbors. Forgive us for ignoring danger to other races: they’re our brothers and sisters. Forgive us for ignoring epidemics past, because they never reached our shores. 

Forgive us for being casual even now because sickness hasn’t hit someone we know. Forgive us for ignoring this plague as something that affects other generations, for making it the subject of jokes, for asking why we should be concerned about their fate or asking what we stand to gain if we help.

Have mercy on us for prioritizing profits over life. Breathe life into the souls of your people. Convict them. May we recognize that when our response to rudeness is to celebrate someone’s death, we have died a little as well.

Have mercy on us for attempting to market the idea of elder self-sacrifice for the hope of future prosperity. As if it were not an inherently wicked idea. As if we could control who this pandemic will affect. As if people in their twenties and thirties and forties weren’t also dying. As if a massive health crisis will not also destroy our economy.

Forgive us for every effort we have made to monetize life. Your work is sacred, and I thank you for it.

In Jesus’s name. 

Amen.

Mischa Field is an ordained reverend who has practiced ministry in Brooklyn for 21 years. His writing explores the intersection of Divinity and Humanity: Faith, Identity, Culture, and the Soul. His heart for hurting people and broken institutions fuel his determination to rebuild both.

A graduate of Amherst College and Alliance Theological Seminary, with degrees in film, writing, and urban ministry, and a background in journalism, he finds consistent joy in the mysteries of faith, consistent humility in attempting to practice them, and constant wonder in God’s ability to accomplish perfect things with perfect combinations of imperfect people.

A native of Brattleboro, Vermont, he lives in Queens with Lori, his wife of 15 years. Soul of the Citizen is his first book.

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