A Prayer for Partisan Times

Two years ago, the Oregon State Legislature ground to a halt. Bills that had been months in the making sat untouched. Debate stalled before it even began. The reason was simple: extreme partisanship had taken hold, and Oregon Senate Republicans staged a walkout that left the chamber without enough members present to do its most basic work.

For six weeks, the Senate floor sat mostly quiet, an eery reminder of what happens when disagreement turns into deadlock. Yet, in the middle of that political impasse, I was invited to do something unexpected: offer the invocation to open one of the Senate’s workdays.

I remember walking into the Capitol with a mix of hope and heaviness. How do you pray when people cannot even sit in the same room together? How do you ask God to move when human cooperation has stalled? Those were the questions pressing on me as I prepared for that moment.

In the summer of 2023, I offered this prayer, not because I had answers but because I believe God meets us even in the places where division seems deepest. Today I share it with you in the hope that it might inspire your own prayers for God’s help, healing, and intervention in the midst of the fractures we still see all around us.

Almighty and All-Knowing God, we praise you for all of your mighty works. You are powerful, loving, and gracious. Thank you for creating us and sustaining us day by day. Thank you that you made us, in your image, to exist in community with others.

We thank you for this state of Oregon we call home. Thank you for our elected officials, first responders, businesses, churches, families, and individuals that make Oregon the great place that it is.

We confess our self-reliance rather than our dependence on you. Thank you for extending provision and protection to our state and nation for so many years. Every resource and freedom we can easily take for granted is a good gift from you.

We ask that you would help those who govern our land. We lift up to you the leaders of our nation, our state, and its local communities—grant them wisdom and compassion. Shower upon them your Spirit for the sake of collaboration toward the common good, that there may be lasting peace and abundance for all.

Give these legislators guidance as they deliberate through today’s session. May every decision be righteous in your sight, for our benefit and for your glory. And now we pray as Your Son Jesus taught us to pray:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name
Your kingdom come, your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
For Yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory
Forever, Amen.