Praying with Marian Wright Edelman

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund. Edelman has served as the Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and is the first African American female to have been on the board of directors of Yale University. Edelman has written many articles and books, including the autobiographical New York Times best-seller, The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours. Edelman's awards include the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, the Ella J. Baker Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She was born June 6th in South Carolina. The youngest of five children, Marian credits her father with instilling in her an obligation to right wrongs. When African Americans in her town were not allowed to enter city parks, Arthur Wright, her father, built a park for Black children behind his church.

Mother Marian is a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School. While working as director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi, she became the first African American female admitted to the Mississippi State Bar. She also became nationally recognized as an advocate for Head Start at this time. In 1968, Edelman moved to Washington, D.C., and subsequently became counsel to the Poor People's Campaign that was organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

She founded the Washington Research Project (WRP), where she focused on lobbying Congress for child and family nutrition programs and expanding the Head Start program. In 1973, the Washington Research Project became the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), the United States' leading advocacy group for children. As president of the CDF, Edelman has worked to decrease teenage pregnancy, increase Medicaid coverage for poor children, and secure government funding for programs such as Head Start.

Marian Wright Edelman delivers the ‘Child Watch’ column every Friday to her CDF subscribers and Huffington Post Weekly. I recommend it. She is a brilliant voice and we need her wisdom in these chaotic days. On March 13th Mother Marian spoke directly to the adult caregivers and shared original texts for supporting our prayer practices. She said, “Here are a few prayers for the parents, teachers, and other caregivers who must be the oaks of strength children need right now even in the midst of adults’ own uncertainty.”

You’ll find this prayer among the quotes we use to direct our intercessions this morning, for all God’s children. 

Let’s pray together.

Listen, Lord; we are knocking on the doors of heaven this morning. We believe that you have called us - your children - creation’s crown.  You promised us that we will not be forgotten by you, that we would not be neglected when we need you.

And how we need you, Lord. How we wonder at your answer in these times. We wonder with Habakkuk. We wonder with Sojourner. We wonder with Medgar and Bayard, Naomi and Hannah. We wonder how long!? How long is this residence in the house of mourning. How long will the danger linger in the air? Listen Lord, we hate it here. We need you to show yourself strong. Listen to our lament this morning, we are weeping for your children, Lord. 

And we will listen to you, O God, through the testimony of our Mother Marian, your beloved baby girl. We will try to lift our weary eyes beyond the hills, to where our help comes from.

[[Marian Wright Edelman’s words are in bold italics, my prayer responses follow. Intercede as you are led from her prompts.]]

God, straighten our backs, clear our heads, strengthen our voices and judgment, infuse our hearts, with Your mighty and comforting spirit. God, help us to be like bamboo, which bends and bows and sways in the winds but never breaks. Listen, Lord, we are so body bent that we feel broken this morning. Help us to keep our minds steadfast on the truth that your body was broken so that we would be whole. Teach us to remember that you will not break your promises, no matter how long we wait on an answer from you. 

I try to act out of faith. I’m sure I am impatient sometimes. I sure do get angry sometimes. I think it's outrageous how hard it is to get this country to feed its children and to take care of its children...The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.

Listen, Lord, we are citizens and residents of many lands where children are the last and the least. In the United States our federal and state governments take little pride in our little ones, share few resources for their health, and expend no energy on their full well-being. Forgive us O God, we are a people of unclean hands and corrupted hearts. And now your precious ones are suffering because of our failures to fight for them. Children of immigrants, children of native peoples, children of Asian cultures, Black and brown children, multi-abled children, children who are sick, children who are suicidal. 

O God, we pray for our children and family members and for our neighbors and their children. Help us God to remember that all Your people are our neighbors and all children are our own. We pray especially for every caregiver, doctors and nurses, health and hospital personnel, and those who serve people with special needs and other vulnerable populations.

Listen Lord, We lament!!! We hate the circumstances that make our babies hate it here! We lament our portion in fueling any bitterness that has formed in their minds to choke their hopes. Make us one with them, make us mindful of what we let them watch and read, how we play with them and everything we say. Remind us that in your house we are all siblings, little children in equal kingdom share to that of our own babies. Show us the truth so that we might be more flint-faced, more secure, and more like you, our most patient Parent, in this family of faith.

God, think Your thoughts in us, do Your work through us, build Your peace in us, share Your love through us. God, please help us to show all of your children by our actions as well as our words that they are loved.  Act and speak, O God. Act your actions through our actions. Speak your words through our mouths. Bend your listening ear to our children - your children - through our bodies bent to listen to you. The hands of these physicians are yours. The feet of these volunteers are your feet, spreading good news and good food in this time of reduced fellowship. The mouths of these preachers are your mouths, send the wisdom that breaks through the testimony of fools. 

And the noises of these children, these too are yours. Their joys and their dreams, their fears expressed and games created, their schoolwork done and commended or barely finished and failed… these are your sounds, the bodies of these babies, even they are prayers to you.  Will you receive their sounds today, O Lord? Will you shine your light to show your children your way?

O God for whom nothing is too hard, who makes the impossible possible every minute of every day, kindle within us an unshakable faith in Your presence, power, and goodness. O God help us to remember that You have the whole world in Your hands—every baby, child, woman, and man in every circumstance everywhere.

Lord, we come to you this morning with parched souls and empty hands. We are grief stricken and boredom shook. We are leaning on the only arms that are not at risk of carrying a sickness to our bodies. We are leaning on your everlasting arms; what fellowship, what joy divine, what blessedness, what peace is mine… help us to lean O God, help us to see your power through the days, whether skies are blue or grey. Give us your sunbeams of hope, show us your concealing covering on days full of shadows. And set your people upright, backs straight, sleep filled and purpose pinned - on you. For from you and through you and to you are all things, O Lord. And if there is any glory to be gotten from this, we ask that you’d hurry up and come get it. Will you hurry as we tarry, O God? Will you just come on through already and get these kids? We are asking for all of us, because it is us, Lord, we are all your little children, in need of great defense.

[Pray these words of Marian Wright Edelman aloud ]

God, make our hearts bigger

our love deeper

our faith stronger

our hope unwavering

our strength greater

our efforts unceasing

our voices unflinching

our vision and actions Yours.

Amen.

Songs: Make Way for Love, Little Saints in Praise // Wash O God Our Sons and Daughters, Oleta Adams // Heaven Come Down, Proclaim Music

Scriptures: Luke 18 // Isaiah 40

Images: The Block, Romare Bearden // Portraits of Marian Wright Edelman