Leviticus 23
6 The Lord God said to Moses:
27 The tenth day of the seventh month[k] is the Great Day of Forgiveness.[l] It is a solemn day of worship; everyone must go without eating to show sorrow for their sins, and sacrifices must be burned. 28 No one is to work on that day—it is the Great Day of Forgiveness, when sacrifices will be offered to me, so that I will forgive your sins. 29 I will destroy anyone who refuses to go without eating. 30-31 None of my people are ever to do any work on that day—not now or in the future. And I will wipe out those who do! 32 This is a time of complete rest just like the Sabbath, and everyone must go without eating from the evening of the ninth to the evening of the tenth.
Richard: We all have sin and need to be forgiven. Also, if we are going through hardships, it’s best to keep a positive attitude of gratitude. We may be paying indemnity (restoring) ours and our ancestors past sins.
Lamentations 2
Zion, deep in your heart
you cried out to the Lord.
Now let your tears overflow
your walls day and night.
Don’t ever lose hope
or let your tears stop.
19 Get up and pray for help
all through the night.
Pour out your feelings
to the Lord,
as you would pour water
out of a jug.
Beg him to save your people,
who are starving to death
at every street crossing.
Richard: We (ourselves and our nation) are in dire straits. Let us cry out to God for His guidance, mercy and forgiveness.
The Ideal Kingdom of Heaven, Our Hope
Rev. Sun Myung Moon
February 22, 1959
Prayer
When we experience Your heart, urging us on today, we cannot help realizing how weak are our bodies. When we realize, too, that the Shim Jung of Heaven is connected and flowing through us today, we feel deeply grateful. Father, please hold onto us. We want to go the way of the cross, with our minds and bodies becoming the offering, following Your request that we liberate Your hope, Your Shim Jung, and Your situation. Therefore, let us not weaken until the end. Make us go over the hill of death with a Shim Jung filled with a heavenly shock that penetrates the mind. Reinforce our exhaustion by allowing our connection with Heaven to be firm.
Allow us to come to the ideal garden for which we have longed. To do that, we have responsibility. Therefore, let us become countenances of joy offered to You as a gift, by fulfilling all the conditions for being a surviving fruit. Make us into Your original sons and daughters whom You want to love and who can receive Your love. Let us dwell in relationships of eternal love, the life of love, and the glory of love. Let us become people whom You cannot help loving and who cannot help receiving love from You. Please lead us this way.
On that account, let us not lack in any qualification to become the citizens of that nation, sons and daughters of that nation, and leaders of that nation. Let us become people of which You can be proud in front of a million satans. Allow the day when all the created world can recite a poem of ecstasy and liberation. Allow it to come quickly.
We know that this is not happening in some conceptual world. We know that if this is not defined through our minds and bodies, which live on this realistic earth and through substance, we cannot finish Heaven’s ideal of creation. Therefore, let us be able to feel with our heart and practice with our actions in the whole field of mission which we take as our responsibility. Make us into sons and daughters who do not hesitate to pioneer any road of battle until the day of hope comes.
Let us be able to pioneer even a difficult road to remove the remaining resentment of the cross and to welcome the hour of happiness and hope, the hour of love in which we can rejoice. We pray that even today we can live in that kind of state. We pray all these things sincerely. We pray in the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.