How do you pray for a broken nation?

After a week of riots, I am desperate to see the peace of God reign in our broken country. I recognise though it has just made it a little bit harder to “love our neighbours as ourselves”. So wondering if this could help our prayers. Isaiah’s words have never sounded more pertinent: “They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isa 2:4).

In my mother’s house, there is a vase with some beautiful flowers by the fireplace. Looking closer you will see it was not made for beauty but for battle – it is a First World War shell casing. After the Great War this ‘sword’ was intentionally transformed from a tool of destruction into a symbol of peace. Another example of a ploughshare programme was the dismantling of nuclear weapons after the Cold War in 1991 which were broken up and used for parts to build nuclear power stations.

However, swords are now being made again. We see shop-sold drones converted to carry explosives, service vehicles turned into mobile rocket launchers and house bricks used as missiles against police. All ideologies, whether they are political, social, epistemological, or ethical present a version of reality that can look reasonable, regardless of whether them having any factual basis or not. They're ‘words’ with a silent ’s’ at the beginning of them.

Paul the Apostle says, “Do not conform to the pattern (ideologies) of the world. but be transformed by the renewing of the mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom 12:20). He knew how easily the mind can quickly be deceived and how we need to rest in the Truth. So I am choosing to pray for more swords to be turned into ploughshares and for the transcending peace of God to “guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). I pray that no thought of mine is allowed to become weaponised in an argument to threaten another individual just because I feel a discomfort with who they are.

Our battle doesn't start with a battle of ideologies but with an invisible enemy hellbent on our destruction. Pray our minds are freed to freely love others to see God's peace rule in hearts & minds.