This week we’re using a variety of songs as aids to our prayers. Singing and praying often go hand in hand.  These songs are peace themed, meant to help us pray for the peace of Jesus in our lives and in our world.

Today’s Bible reading and an excerpt

Read Luke 12:49-53

Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Today’s song and an excerpt

Changes by 2 Pac Shakur Lyrics

“Learn to see me as a brother instead of 2 distant strangers
And that’s how it’s supposed to be
How can the Devil take a brother if he’s close to me?
I’d love to go back to when we played as kids
But things changed, and that’s the way it is
Come on come on
That’s just the way it is
Things’ll never be the same
That’s just the way it is
Aww yeah”

More thoughts for meditation

2 Pac Shakur had a way of musically tying, connecting the dots between war, poverty, criminal justice, and the black experience. His song “Changes” is both mournful and hopeful. 2 Pac didn’t claim to be a devout Christian; though he wasn’t hostile to Jesus. More often than God, he put forward himself and his music as a change agent set to restore dignity and unity to black Americans. But some of his music has enough hope and longing in it that it’s easy to set it to a prayer, and 2 Pac was still friendly to the truth and justice that Jesus brought when it was as real as Jesus really is and not fake.

Jesus knows that his presence disrupts the way that the world is ordered, that his too real love gets rejected and ends up dividing people , even families. Pray to see reality the way Jesus sees it, raw and real, with the kind of hope that Jesus has , too. 2 Pac’s lyrics might help with that. Jesus wants to take it as far and even farther than 2 Pac could do by himself, entering into our world so that “Things’ll never be the same.”

Pray

Disrupt my normal, our normal, with your presence