Cw: Abuse, victimization, implied sexualization
God,
One of my kids former teachers
betrayed the school,
(himself, his family, his students, and most of all his fellow teachers)
and got arrested today–
and my eldest,
with tears streaming down his face
said he couldn’t believe it.
And I had to say, I wouldn’t lie to you about this
and sometimes people make bad choices
and sometimes those people are especially nice to hide their faultiness.
And I thought about, how, almost every place I lived,
there was an adult lurking, who wasn’t safe.
Was this how it felt Jesus?
When Judas betrayed you?
Even though you knew it was coming,
surely at some point he was a true disciple,
Surely you really wanted him to be your real friend Jesus.
And so I wrapped my child in my arms, and I told him:
The bad doesn’t take away the bad one does, but the bad doesn’t take away the good either.
And that we hoped he would get the help he needed, to truly and actually change.
And I imagine that you do the same.
Wrapping us in your arms,
coaxing us towards love, and grace, and forgiveness.
Because, sometimes we feel that brokenness all too sharply.
Please be with us when we betray or are betrayed we pray.
Because Christians and leaders and mentors are not perfect,
and it’s so important to have people we can trust in our lives.
When we are brokenhearted wrap us in your arms,
and remind us of that we are loved and worthy of love, we pray.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
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Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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katyandtheword 
this was a really powerful prayer for today. I’ve been betrayed, but I hadn’t connected that suffering to Christ’s. Thank you.