Prayer at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Birmingham, Alabama on the Occasion of the 35th Anniversary of the bombing
By James R. Barnette
[Dr. Barnette is Minister to Samford University and is Interim Pastor at the Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.]
O God who sees us through the wilderness,
We acknowledge with weary hearts
that one score and fifteen years was not too long ago.
Indeed, O God, one score and fifteen years is frightfully recent.
And so, call us back to just yesterday-
Just yesterday when a dream deferred exploded
Just yesterday when a voice was heard in Ramah
Just yesterday when worship turned to wailing
Just yesterday when white dresses were blood-spattered
Just yesterday when we wept and raged
Just yesterday when You wept and raged with us.
And yet, O God, even in that wilderness
of smoke and stone
of blood and brokenness
of hared and cowardice
You turned our hearts toward Canaan,
And you promised again
a day of reckoning, and
a day of being reconciled.
But we confess, O God, that the smoke has not cleared,
That still we see Lady Justice through a glass too darkly,
That we still have miles to go
before our throats are cooled by the milk of justice
before our tongues savor the sweet honey of righteousness
before you let it all roll down in a thundering stream.
And until that Day, O God,
Remind us that the day is young,
That just yesterday
Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley
Came here to help lead a worship service
and instead helped lead a Movement.
And that just yesterday
their deaths breathed new light
into our Journey toward Canaan.
We gather tonight, O God, to take another step toward that Blessed Land.
And so, in shared step we say together,
Amen, and Amen.
