Friday Prayer Blogging
Most of this week on the religion side of the news has obviously focus on the passing of Pope John Paul II. My wife was raised Catholic and my mother-in-law still is, so it has been interesting talking to both of them this past week about this.While life ending is always somewhat sad, neither of them were overly distraught about this. In fact, they were excited to some degree because they know he is now in heaven, where he would have most wanted to be (and a confidence in knowing that the position of Pope is not gone, but that now God's plan is for someone else to do that).
I also realized this past week how little I knew about the Pope. I remembered hearing little things about him helping to defeat communism in his native Poland, his lack of a more modern approach to women's rights and roles, his strong efforts globally to influence oppressive regimes in nations around the world, etc.. At ExPat's encouragement, I was thinking today's prayers could focus on continuing to work for the good goals the Pope had. But when I started to try to research it, I found there was way too much to include in one blog. I did find this line:
"Simplified radically, his theology was this: Without fixed moral principles, people can fall into the trap of treating one another like objects of commerce or pleasure or vengeance"
It seems to me that often the topics on this and other similar blogs do include a lot of moral principles and it is good and right to know what yours are and to have them clearly defined and it is even good to encourage others to do likewise. But here is my simplified prayer request for us today:
Give us moral principles that we know, understand, believe in, can articulate, can live with, and can be passionate about supporting and let those moral principles never lead us to treat another like an object of commerce or pleasure or vengeance.
posted by gurufrisbee @ 10:04 AM
