PASTOR MAPSON WAS ONE OF MANY CLERGY PERSONS WHO OFFERED A PRAYER AT PHILADELPHIA'S CELEBRATION OF THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER MAY 2, 2008 OUTSIDE OF CITY HALL.

God of Creation, of earth, sky and sea; God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; God of our fathers and mothers; God of our weary years and silent tears; We seek your face in a world ravaged by war, poverty, pestilence and disease. We seek your face in a nation divided between red states and blue states; Republicans and Democrats; liberals and conservatives; Black and White; city and suburb; We seek your face in a nation torn by our inhumanity toward one another; our disrespect for opinions that differ from ours; our trashing of this wonderful world you created; our ideological need to win rather than to do the right thing. We have sinned in our failure to lift the weak and the powerless; to temper justice with mercy and law with grace. We have sinned in our arrogance and pride, and trusting in our own abilities. We have sinned by seeking to gain the whole world, while losing our souls. We have sinned by putting selfishness and ego ahead of you, and not putting you first. Forgive us our sins, our shortcomings and shortsightedness; our refusal to come together and work together. We thank you for our civic leaders, government officials, the police, the fire fighters who risk life and limb to serve and protect us; Yet, may they serve us with accountability and compassion and use their authority wisely. We thank you for our city officials, our mayor, who has given us a sense of hope and promise for something better. Yet, may we remember that it is not his fight alone; that a change in attitude and a change in direction must take place in every neighborhood, on every street corner, in every home. A spirit of kindness and respect toward one another; a sense of cooperation between home and school; a sense of moral responsibility so that we will no longer tolerate what we have tolerated in the past. Thank you for our religious institutions and people of faith all over the city and throughout the land, seeking to show men and women, boys and girls, a higher way of living, and that life is more than satisfying the needs of the flesh. Continue to empower our houses of faith in our communities as they light up the neighborhoods with divine presence. Teach us that our allegiance is not just to the flag, but to the cross; not just to our culture, but to you; not just to our pronouncements, but to your Word, for heaven and earth shall pass away, but your words shall never pass away. Keep us from complacency, from cynicism, from fear, from faint-heartedness. And transform us into the kind of people you would have us to be. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, Amen.