From the NYTimes: "Matthew Shepard Will Be Interred at the Washington National Cathedral"
‘Two decades ago, Matthew Shepard was robbed by two men, pistol-whipped and tied to a fence in Laramie. He hung there bleeding in near-freezing temperatures until a passing bicyclist spotted him, thinking at first that he was a scarecrow. He later died in a hospital.
"His death was a wound on our nation,” Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said in an interview on Wednesday. “We are doing our part to bring light out of that darkness and healing to those who have been so often hurt, and sometimes hurt in the name of the church.”’
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. ~ Psalm 139: 11-12
Support the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which ‘empowers individuals to embrace human dignity and diversity through outreach, advocacy, and resource programs.’
O God, we pray for Matthew Shepard and for his family. We praise you that you are with him now; we pray that you draw close to his family and comfort them as they remember. Draw near to and comfort each LGBTQ+ person, every adult, youth, and child, that they might know in this life that they are fearfully and wonderfully made. We pray for the end of discrimination and the devastation it visits upon the lives of the innocent and those who love them. Help us to repent of the ways in which we still delay the siblinghood without condition you desire for each of your beloved. Thank you for the diversity and beauty of humanity, which is in your image. Amen.
(From The Resistance Prays, October 11, 2018 By Rev. Perry Dixon)
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