MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | A Prayer for Minnesota

This reflection is offered as a moment of collective pause for our community.

O God of still waters and long winters,
of wide skies and patient seasons,
we come quietly today.

We come not with answers,
but with the weight of living through days that have asked too much of us.

Minnesota is tired.
Not broken, but weary in the way land grows weary after too many storms,
in the way people grow weary when grief arrives without warning and leaves without apology.

Hold us now.

Hold the neighborhoods where fear has learned to whisper.
Hold the homes where silence has replaced conversation.
Hold the elders who remember other hard seasons and the young who wonder what kind of future is forming beneath their feet.

Let us not turn on one another in our pain.
Let us not confuse loudness for truth or anger for strength.
Teach us again how to listen, how to pause, how to breathe in the cold air and remember that we belong to one another.

Bless the hands that keep showing up.
The hands that cook meals when words fail.
The hands that shovel snow for a neighbor without being asked.
The hands that hold candles, children, grief, and hope all at once.

Be near to those who have lost something they cannot name.
A sense of safety.
A sense of ease.
A sense of trust in the ordinary rhythm of life.

Restore what has been shaken.
Not quickly, not cheaply, but honestly.

Remind us that healing is not an event but a practice.
That peace is not the absence of pain but the presence of care.
That courage often looks like staying soft in a time that pressures us to harden.

For the rivers that still run beneath the ice,
for the streets that carry both memory and possibility,
for the communities that refuse to disappear even when strained,
We give thanks.

Teach Minnesota how to be gentle again.
With itself.
With its stories.
With its people.

Let justice grow quietly, like roots beneath frozen ground.
Let compassion outlast outrage.
Let wisdom speak in steady tones, not hurried ones.

And when the night feels long,
remind us that dawn has always found this place before.

We place this land, this moment, and one another into Your care.
Not asking to escape the season,
but asking for the strength to move through it together.

Amen.

MinneapoliMedia