O LORD our God, you have made every man, woman, and child an image of Yourself, to be honored and respected for that reason all by itself. Yet millennium after millennium, century after century, decade after decade, year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day, we have, as a human race, shown contempt for Your image by showing contempt for our fellow man, even to the point of killing with no just cause. We are angry, and our anger leads to violence and killing. We are selfishness, and our selfishness leads to neglecting the safety of others. We put ourselves first and care little for the effects our actions have on our neighbors near and far. Bring us to repentance, we pray, and cause us to think carefully, and live carefully, that all our acts might enhance our neighbors’ lives. When our business generates pollutants, make us glad to bear the cost of capturing and properly disposing of those without regulators’ having to tell us to do so. Draw us back from a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, and teach us to be good stewards of all that You entrust to us. Bring an end, we pray, to the most blatant ways in which we kill people unjustly today: abortion, euthanasia, terrorism and unjust state-to-state warfare, careless pollution, even policies the unintended consequences of which are to deprive the poor of the food and water and energy they need to thrive. Jesus said He came that we might have life, and that more abundantly. Teach us to live in ways that make life more abundant for all our neighbors, we pray. In the name of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the Life, we pray, amen.