Lord, give us such faith. The years have been good to us. The days have been bright and sunny. Yea, Lord, our country faces a most difficult time. We have spent our way into prosperity by the gospel of debt, thinking there would never be any end to the increase of wealth. We have made a bet. We have gambled. We have cast the dice. We have weighed the risk and we have lost. We are not supposed to lose. We have been taught in school that destiny is in our hands. We learned years ago if we think positively, then we shall reap many rewards. We have committed our hope to greedy men in suits and ties. We have transferred our safety to men who make laws in Washington, D.C. We have played loose with the laws of God and denigrated the reality of the judgment of God and erased it from our vocabulary. We have preached a God who is more like Santa Claus than a holy and righteous God. We have forgotten that we cannot fool God. God sees everything. We have pushed into the dark crevices of our mind the fact that God is a God of vengeance.

Lord, you are a God of fury and wrath. Your anger cannot be appeased forever. You can cause the sun to darken and the mountains to fall into the depths of the sea. You are the God who sends the both plague and calamity. You can scourge the earth with the fierceness of your indignation and the ferocity of your vexation. You can quickly cause men to panic and tremble. The strong shall become weak and fall to the ground, and the courageous shall run like cowards in the midst of the battle. Men shall die and their wives shall become widows. Their children shall become orphans.

Lord, the men of God have preached peace, peace to the world when there is no peace. Take warning, O judges of the earth, for God can break us with the rod of iron. He can shatter us like clay pots into thousands of pieces, even the sacred institutions of our nation. The rich may go begging in the street and the proud will bow their heads to the earth. For God is a jealous God who will not long endure idolatry and immorality. The end always come and men may wander in the streets asking why O Lord, why? O Lord, we may indeed face such a future.

But O Lord, we know what we can do. We know where we can go. We have a Savior in Jesus Christ who has told us to take his yoke upon us for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. When we have let sin overcome us and we sit in shame in the middle of the street, we know a Savior who can take away that shame. When we have let pride control us, and we fall deep into a ditch on the side of the road, we know a Savior who can pull us out of the ditch. When we have put our hope in someone other than God, and become depressed that suicide even seems like a choice we could make, we know a Savior who can redirect our attention to the God who has a purpose in all things, even in our own suffering. O Lord, the name of Jesus has become a byword, a curse word, a vending machine of sugar and spice. We know better. We know that from His mouth comes a sword and in His eyes there is a flaming fire. May God have mercy on the man who is not on His side.

Lord, we are on Your side. We have confessed our sins. We have put our hope in the cross for the atonement of ours sins. We have repented and turned away from all that displeases You. We have been baptized into the Church. We have put ourselves under the elders of the Church who guard our souls and keep us from the pains of Hell itself. We are faithful to the assembly of the saints in order that we may be encouraged and that we might encourage others. Without Thy word, we would starve. Without Thy truth we would die of thirst.