Luke 27
27 This is what I say to all who will listen to me:
Love your enemies, and be good to everyone who hates you. 28 Ask God to bless anyone who curses you, and pray for everyone who is cruel to you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, don’t stop that person from slapping you on the other cheek. If someone wants to take your coat, don’t try to keep back your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks and don’t ask people to return what they have taken from you. 31 Treat others just as you want to be treated.
1 Samuel 7
The Israelites were afraid when they heard that the Philistines were coming. 8 “Don’t stop praying!” they told Samuel. “Ask the Lord our God to rescue us.”
Let Us Open Our Eyes Once More and Behold the Sky
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
February 15, 1959
Prayer
We must lift our gaze and look to Heaven. Although our eyes have become extremely dim, we must constantly look for something to appear. We must look at everything in history since the time of Adam.
These things have made it impossible for us to find the center of life and the standard of our thoughts. Please allow us to have the heart with which to overcome them and look to Heaven, the heart which can transcend human love and be embraced by Heaven’s love. Please let us recognize that we are struggling in bitter grudges held against the earth, Heaven and all things, and let us set out in search of our second selves, craving our second selves. Please allow us to have an anxious heart, which makes it unbearable for us to leave the matter unresolved.
We are the ones who must govern and protect the original garden which we lost. We are the ones who must make bonds of love with all things and offer them together to the Father. We are the ones who bear the responsibility to make the Father’s flowers of love blossom through the heart with which the Father created the universe.
Father of love, we earnestly ask that You awaken humanity, who are fast asleep without having taken even one step forward, and that You raise them to become people who can greet the glorious new morning and open their eyes toward the sky.
Please allow us to become people who can open our eyes again to look to Heaven and feel new willpower springing up before world history. Please allow us to tie the new ideology and the new heart together and to move the new tribe. Father, this is our sincere prayer.
If there are such people and such a nation, then let the world become connected to Heaven through them. Please protect the Korean people, so that they will not despair in their present miserable situation.
We understand that what lies ahead of us is the historical valley of misfortune, which will require us to reject everything and lift our eyes again. We Koreans have the greatest amount of undesirable things to be discarded. We cannot boast about our politics or religion, and there is nothing in our possession with which we can go forward. We live in an environment which we must abandon. Please guide us not to cling to them, but let us open our eyes toward Heaven. We know that You have blocked our path so that we may set out toward the new destination which humanity cannot behold. Please guide us not to despair, to forget all our fatigue, and to persistently move forward each day.
We know that only when such people appear, who can open their eyes and look to Heaven, can this earth regain its life and this world live. Please permit us to become those people.
Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane with the heart of someone who was destitute. He felt as if he had lost his parents, his brothers and sisters, his nation and the world. Please allow us to feel the same heart and possess Heaven only after experiencing the feelings of having lost everything. Because the bonds must be made on the earth, Jesus resurrected after he died. We know that Jesus had the responsibility to set the condition of bonds on the earth.
Even if we are to lose everything of the earth and to fall down with the heavenly standard and nothing else, please allow us to march toward the one day when the hope of Jesus, the hope of Heaven, and the hope of humanity can be realized on the earth through us. Please allow us to dash toward that day every day, every year, for the remaining days of our lives. Wishing this most sincerely, we pray in the name of the Lord. Amen.