A prayer today from my book Poems to Help You Pray, seeking God’s help in overcoming the prejudices that may still find a place somewhere in our hearts, and asking for genuine openness to others in all our dealings with them.
Lord, for using labels to decide on people’s worth:
their age, their sex, their class, their roots,
their faith or place of birth,
their politics or culture, the colour of their skin,
the outward signs that mark them out
instead of what’s within;
for summing people up by what nobody can change –
allowing background, creed or race
to poison and estrange –
for all such prejudice, forgive, and from it set me free
to meet the person underneath –
to look and really see.