Wednesday, December 21, 2011

As Per Your Promise, Father, Silence All Slander

A Lutheran prayer in the face of false accusations:
As you have promised, give us your goodness in place of our wickedness. Silence all cruel slanderers and accusers, those who magnify our faults, and the devil. Do so now and whenever our conscience is worried. Keep us from all backbiting and from exaggerating the sins of others. Judge us not by the evidence of the devil and by our own depressed consciences. Hear not the cry of our enemies who accuse us day and night before you, just as we would not listen to the slandering and accusing of others. Take from our souls the heavy burden of all our sins, so that with a clear, joyful, and sincere conscience we may endure and do all things, and live and die fully confident of your mercy. Amen. 
—Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 35-36.

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