This Fourth of July weekend, I’m taking time to pray for our country, and I hope you will, too. And I don’t know about you, but when I pray for our nation, I find that the language of my prayer oscillates between gratitude and lament.

I thank God for the noble ideals upon which our nation was founded, and all the examples down through history of us living up to them. I thank God for freedom and peace, and the people who have sacrificed much (or even all) to maintain them. I thank God for the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law, and representative democracy, and national parks. There is so much to be thankful for in our country, and it is such a holy thing to pray our gratitude.

Yet prayer should be honest, and so we pray for those places in our society that are not what they are intended to be. Though our Declaration of Independence professes that all men are created equal, 244 years later the reality of our black, brown, and red citizens reveals dangerous, lingering inequalities. Though we are a nation founded on the talent and spirit of immigrants, too often we close ourselves off from those who desperately need to reach the safety and opportunity of our shores. Though we have sacrificed much to ensure the freedom of all people, too often we turn to weapons to resolve complex diplomatic disputes.

And so this weekend I’m going to take time to pray longingly for God to help us pass to future generations a more just and virtuous and peaceful nation than the one we inherited. In our efforts to get to a place where all lives matter, we need to show by our words, deeds, laws, and truth-telling that black lives, brown lives, red lives matter.

In defiance of this human tendency to un-matter people, didn’t Jesus, all over Galilee, at the Cross and after his Resurrection, matter people? Isn’t that why his words and example continue to soften our hearts, and save us from the status quo? As individuals, it is possible to be grateful for who you are and what you’ve received, while also recognizing you are not yet the fullness of what God intended for you to become. The same is true for societies and for nations.

So this weekend, I hope you will lift up prayers of thanksgiving, hope, and intercession for our nation and for our world.