I just met with Blue Like Jazz author Donald Miller who accepted an invitation last week to give the benediction at the DNC tonight.
I will post a longer interview later, but he gave me a few hints about his prayer tonight.
“I wrote a version of it and it was awful. It just sounded like something that was like every other political speech of idealistic language. I knew it when I wrote it and sent it to some friends and they said, ?huh.’ I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to it, got off the plane in Denver yesterday, stopped at a Mexican restaurant, on my way to the rehearsal where we had to enter the text into a teleprompter, I said ok, ?If there were no cameras on me, and there was no microphone on me, what would I pray, what would I request of God for the people who are in the room?’ And I wrote that prayer.
“It’s not very shocking, but it’s, ?Be with people of power, and give them wisdom to come up with policies that will help the least of these, with opportunity to success, help to support people not causes, help us get our hands dirty, and then a sort of affirmation that we need God. All of our best efforts have not worked so far. We need him to show up and help us. And that’s it.
“This is a prayer where I use the name of Jesus, and there was no push back at all. In fact I think I had something that they considered it to be a little tense against Republicans when I talk about our standing in the world and restore favor. They actually backed down some of the language.
“I’m telling you, if Christians were to show up here they’d be very, very surprised. You can find what you want to find if you believe these people are evil and hate you. You can find that much easier when you can find the evangelicals who are protesting, the things that they’re doing and the language that they’re hearing. They use blow horns, so they’re easier to hear.”
