The prayer you offer, with its urgent appeal to Scripture for leaders and lands, is in many ways good, for we are indeed commanded to make supplications for all in authority. Yet let us take heed, lest we mistake the nature of the kingdom for which we pray and the peace for which we long. You speak of a "Beautiful Land" and the fostering of godly alliances between free countries. But I ask you, where is the Christian's true country? Our citizenship is in heaven. The land we seek is not one defended by armies or made glorious by righteous rulers, but the City whose builder and maker is God. To pray for a temporal kingdom as if it were the hope set before us is to miss the mark. The Cross which we preach seemed folly to the wise of this world, and the Gospel is a wisdom hidden from the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. The very notion of a "Christian nation" adorned with power and influence is often a snare, a shadow of the true kingdom that is not of this world.
You pray for the salvation and protection of presidents, generals, and justices, and this is our duty. But recall what kind of King intercedes for us: Christ, the High Priest who ever lives to make intercession. He saves to the uttermost not by marshaling earthly powers, but through the weakness of the Cross, which is the power of God. The world, in all its wisdom, did not know God through the majesty of creation; it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. So while we pray for rulers, we do not pin our hope on their conversion or their crafting of godly policy. The heart of the king is indeed in the hand of the Lord, but He turns it where He will, often for purposes hidden from us, sometimes to chastise, sometimes to humble all earthly pride. Your prayer leans heavily on the hope of good government bringing about a quiet and dignified life. This external peace is a gift we should seek, but beware of confusing it with the peace Christ gives. The peace He leaves with us is not the world’s peace, the cessation of conflict between nations or the triumph of a supposedly Christian political agenda. That external concord can even be a false peace, a conspiracy of robbers agreeing together. The true peace is first within the soul, reconciled to God through the blood of the Cross, and then between brothers in the body of Christ.
Therefore, when you ask for God to "save the worst, bless the best, and guide them all," do so with the understanding that the "best" in the world’s eyes may be those who crucify Christ anew in their hearts, and the "worst" are precisely the ones He came to save. The wisdom we speak among the perfect is not a plan for a godly political order, but Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. Pray for all men because God desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, but the truth is not a worldview to be legislated; it is a Person to be proclaimed. Do not be dismayed when earthly powers falter and when the influence of what is called evil seems to grow. Was not the early Church built under Nero? The blood of the martyrs is the seed. God is working all things not to establish a glorious land under the sun, but to bring many sons to glory in His eternal kingdom. Let your peace, therefore, be the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of faith, quenching the fiery darts of the evil one, which often come in the form of anxiety over temporal affairs. Pray for the peace of the heavenly Jerusalem, and for earthly governors only insofar as their rule allows for the unhindered preaching of the Gospel, the word of the Cross, which is foolishness to the perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
