The Community Prayer from the 2013 Sandy Commemoration

I had the privilege of giving the Community Prayer at the 2013 Hurricane Sandy Commemoration in Perth Amboy, NJ.  Here is that prayer.

Let us pray,

Dear God, one year ago, we didn’t know.  We didn’t know what the storm would do.  We didn’t know what we’d have to do to survive.  We didn’t know how long it would last, where it would go, what it would leave in its wake.  One year ago, a Hurricane of unimagined proportions, riding through a set of circumstances called unique by the forecasters of the time, bore down on us.  We didn’t know what we were going to go through.

And we, here, some would call the lucky ones.  The communities of Middlesex County most affected, Perth Amboy, Carteret, Woodbridge, South Amboy, Sayreville, Old Bridge, and South River, some call lucky compared to what happened in Ocean County and in Monmouth County and elsewhere.  We do not come before you tonight as a community that feels lucky.

Neither did the police and fire and emergency services who responded that night and in the days to follow, the first response agencies, the churches and faith communities, the nonprofit agencies, the companies, the utilities, people from the local, county, state, and federal governments, all of those people did not come to us, did not leave behind their own families and loved ones because we got lucky.

Dear Lord, to you we offer our fears, to you we offer our brokenness, to you we offer our grief, to you we offer our helplessness, our experiences, our traumas, our aftermaths, our pain, and our distress.  Tonight we commemorate the hurricane that changed Perth Amboy forever.  We do not forget our brothers and sisters in other communities, in other counties, in other states, we do not forget what they have gone through because of this storm.  No, we stand with them in You, we stand together, we join together, we remember together, we rebuild together.

One year later, we celebrate the power You place in the human spirit.  We celebrate what you have created in us dear Lord that has enabled us to rise above.  Maybe, perhaps, we even dare to thank you for sending that storm to remind us of the power that we can have when we are not so boxed into our lives, not so focused on our own needs, not so selfish in the accumulation of things, to remind us of the true power of humanity that comes when we unite in love and care and concern to put the needs and lives and troubles of others before our own needs and concerns.

How many times must we come through tragedy to muster the groundswell, to grow the grassroots, to build our efforts for the better, for the greater good?  We commemorate Sandy this night, but we also remember the other times when we have risen to greater heights.  We remember the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, we remember the days in 1951 after the ammunition ship explosion in South Amboy, we remember the service of women and men in our community in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Vietnam, in Korea, in the Second World War, and in every battle and skirmish in between, we remember every event of terror and destruction and fear and brokenness in our lives not to commiserate, not to plunge again into depression, not to cast our eyes down and surrender. 

No Lord, we remember each instance not for how it tore us down, but we remember how we came back together and rebuilt our lives, our families, our communities, our nation, into something greater.  We remember those lowest times that led us to climb to the highest moments of care and commitment and courage.

Tonight we commemorate that storm not because of how it broke us down but because of how we have come back even stronger by the power of love and care and concern.  Yet even as we remember how we have overcome, we do not forget those still haunted by the storm, those still struggling to rebuild, those still trying to overcome the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual traumas that the storm brought in its wake.

There are people out there who cause more pain to survivors now then the storm ever did.   There are survivors of the storm who, to this day, feel that they are more at the mercy of an insurance company more interested in profit than people, people who feel that they are at the mercy of governmental bureaucracies, people for whom our gathering and commemoration tonight would feel like a slap in the face to their own pain and suffering because they have not yet come to the place where they are stronger than the storm.

Lord, we reach out with our hearts and prayers to each of those people, we ask that you would lead us to them that we may continue to extend the hand of strength, the hand of care, the hand of love, and the hand of community so that this Storm does no more damage in the lives of our neighborhoods.  Lord, we ask for your wisdom and your guidance that we may be ever vigilant and not fall back into complacency with a presumption that such a storm can never happen again.  Lord, we ask for your spirit to fill our lives and drive us to prepare and be ready, we ask for your spirit that the power that unites us in times of tragedy can continue to unite us in times of plenty for the betterment of all humanity.

Dear Lord, bless the survivors of the storm, bless the first responders who put themselves into harm’s way to aid those survivors, bless the agents of rebuilding, who helped to rebuild our neighborhoods in the aftermath to a new normal, and bless the workers of the recovery, those women and men who are in it for the long hall, committed to work for a year or two years or as long as it takes until every person affected by Sandy can look back and say, “I remember when it happened, and I remember how we overcame what happened to us.”

Dear Lord, bless us we pray as we go away from this event, may we be filled again with the commitment to help others.

Dear Lord, bless the City of Perth Amboy, bless Middlesex County, bless the State of New Jersey, and bless the United States of America.

Amen.