As we gather before you, O Lord of heaven, and are gathered by your Spirit to your word, we count it a privilege to hallow your name above all others—to call you Holy, Other, Sacred. And so we give you thanks for this time and space to worship you. We come to this time awed to heaven in our hearts, yet bearing in our memories the matters of earth. From the six days of ministry now behind us, we fashion these prayers for your entire world. Your have heard our praises, now hear our intercessions.
We do pray that your kingdom will come, especially in places around the globe where the kingdoms at hand are unjust, unbalanced, unsympathetic to the call to justice and mercy. In Greece and Malaysia and the Sudan and Hong Kong and every other troubled place this week—and in our places as well—may your peaceable kingdom come, and quickly. As it is in heaven, in the space of your infinite light and love, so it may it be on earth.
We do pray that you would be generous with your daily bread around the world, both the bread the builds up the body and the bread that nourishes the soul. We pray for every hungry place—hungry for food, hungry for justice, hungry for good news, and we pray for the peculiar hunger in our own lives as well.
We pray for human relationships around the world, relations both great and small. Wherever there are broken bonds, old wounds, deep channels of vengeance, raise up voices to announce the news of your forgiveness and the possibility it brings for forgiving others, and teach us, O Lord, how to be a forgiven/forgiving people.
We pray for the church around the world—wherever folks gather under the name of Jesus, and seek to walk in his way. May none of your servants be lead into temptation, and may your Spirit deliver from evil all who are encumbered by sin or sorrow.
These intercessions we bring with us this day, and we offer them in the name of the one to whom belongs the kingdom, the power, and the glory, today and forevermore.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prayer. Show all posts
July 1, 2010
June 20, 2010
A Prayer for Trinity Sunday
This is our worship, O God. We praise you and pray to you because that is what you made us for, and that is what Jesus taught us to do, and this is what your Spirit prompts in us now—our praise and our prayers.
From a week of living in your world, O Father, we gather now to worship you—you who are eternal, timeless, without beginning or end. This world we know is yours, and yours alone. You have made it, and so to you we lift our prayers for it. Dor people and places around the globe who cry out for your good gifts: mercy, justice, healing, truth … And we confess those sins of ours that mar the landscape of this week now finished …
From a week of discipleship in your world, O Jesus, we gather now to worship you—you who invaded our history and walked among us, wearing our flesh and announcing God’s news. This is your gospel, and yours alone. You have spoken it, and so we lift our prayers to you for those who most need to hear it. For people and places right in our own lives who cry out for faith, hope, and love, for a saving-healing-restoring word from you … And we confess those places in our own lives today that resist your call and conversion …
From a week of ministry in your world, Holy Spirit, we gather now to worship you—you who are present among us in this moment, connecting us to Christ and drawing us together in fresh unity. This is your time, and yours alone. You make it worship, and us God’s people, so we lift our prayers to you for people and places we have yet to know, for those to whom you will soon call us to go, and love, and serve … And we confess our fear of the future and our resistance to being led forward by you …
This is our worship, O God. We praise you and pray to you because that is what you made us for, and that is what Jesus taught us to do, and this is what your Spirit prompts in us now.
From a week of living in your world, O Father, we gather now to worship you—you who are eternal, timeless, without beginning or end. This world we know is yours, and yours alone. You have made it, and so to you we lift our prayers for it. Dor people and places around the globe who cry out for your good gifts: mercy, justice, healing, truth … And we confess those sins of ours that mar the landscape of this week now finished …
From a week of discipleship in your world, O Jesus, we gather now to worship you—you who invaded our history and walked among us, wearing our flesh and announcing God’s news. This is your gospel, and yours alone. You have spoken it, and so we lift our prayers to you for those who most need to hear it. For people and places right in our own lives who cry out for faith, hope, and love, for a saving-healing-restoring word from you … And we confess those places in our own lives today that resist your call and conversion …
From a week of ministry in your world, Holy Spirit, we gather now to worship you—you who are present among us in this moment, connecting us to Christ and drawing us together in fresh unity. This is your time, and yours alone. You make it worship, and us God’s people, so we lift our prayers to you for people and places we have yet to know, for those to whom you will soon call us to go, and love, and serve … And we confess our fear of the future and our resistance to being led forward by you …
This is our worship, O God. We praise you and pray to you because that is what you made us for, and that is what Jesus taught us to do, and this is what your Spirit prompts in us now.
May 8, 2010
Prayers for a Sunday in May
We do praise you, O Lord, and we pray our worship today traces all your great mercies, all your providence and grace—in our lives and in your world.
We come to this prayer for others with a week’s worth of living now fresh in our memory. We have talked with neighbors in the dairy aisle and we have read Facebook updates and we have watched the nightly news and we have read the local headlines.
With all of this, we find we know what the Apostle means when he speaks of your world in labor pains: pregnant with possibility, yes, but also plenty of groaning, plenty of pain.
We intercede today for those most affected by the troubles in the creation: oil slicks in the Gulf and flood waters in Tennessee and explosions in Russian mines, and wherever else there is groaning …
We intercede today for those who are grieving, mourning the palpable loss of someone from their lives: for the Kurtz family and our Amish neighbors around this community, for the deRosa home and classmates, for those sons and daughters mourning a mother on this bittersweet day, for all who have loved and lost and groan for a reuniting …
We intercede today for the politics of the globe: for the uncertain Prime Minister of Britain and Greek debt woes and sluggish Middle East peace plans and loud protests in Thailand and especially for the untold thousands below our radar who groan for justice and peace …
We intercede today for mothers everywhere, especially those who nourish their babies and raise their children in difficult places and against incredible odds. For all mothers who groan with struggle …
As for us, where our mothers and grandmothers have nourished us with faith, hope, and love, we give you thanks. Where there is pain in failed relationships or grief in recent departures, we pray for the peace of your forgiveness and the comfort of resurrection hope.
These are our intercessions, O Lord. We tell your wonders and sing your worth, and we look for the day when all groaning will cease and all hard labor subside—all of it, transcended by the birth of your final kingdom. Until then, we pray Jesus’ durable prayer ...
We come to this prayer for others with a week’s worth of living now fresh in our memory. We have talked with neighbors in the dairy aisle and we have read Facebook updates and we have watched the nightly news and we have read the local headlines.
With all of this, we find we know what the Apostle means when he speaks of your world in labor pains: pregnant with possibility, yes, but also plenty of groaning, plenty of pain.
We intercede today for those most affected by the troubles in the creation: oil slicks in the Gulf and flood waters in Tennessee and explosions in Russian mines, and wherever else there is groaning …
We intercede today for those who are grieving, mourning the palpable loss of someone from their lives: for the Kurtz family and our Amish neighbors around this community, for the deRosa home and classmates, for those sons and daughters mourning a mother on this bittersweet day, for all who have loved and lost and groan for a reuniting …
We intercede today for the politics of the globe: for the uncertain Prime Minister of Britain and Greek debt woes and sluggish Middle East peace plans and loud protests in Thailand and especially for the untold thousands below our radar who groan for justice and peace …
We intercede today for mothers everywhere, especially those who nourish their babies and raise their children in difficult places and against incredible odds. For all mothers who groan with struggle …
As for us, where our mothers and grandmothers have nourished us with faith, hope, and love, we give you thanks. Where there is pain in failed relationships or grief in recent departures, we pray for the peace of your forgiveness and the comfort of resurrection hope.
These are our intercessions, O Lord. We tell your wonders and sing your worth, and we look for the day when all groaning will cease and all hard labor subside—all of it, transcended by the birth of your final kingdom. Until then, we pray Jesus’ durable prayer ...
December 12, 2009
Advent prayer
Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light,
And usher in the morning;
O shepherds, shrink not with afright,
But hear the angel’s warning.
This Child, now weak in infancy,
Our confidence and joy shall be,
The power of Satan breaking,
Our peace eternal making.
Break forth, O beautiful heavenly light. Break forth around us and illuminate the world in which we live. Give us eyes to see what you see, O Lord: a world broken, rent, in a thousand cross-like ways; yet a world, being reconciled and redeemed by your love—with a million resurrection possibilities.
We come to worship this Advent morning with six days of living on our hearts: 144 hours of walking in the Way while walking in your world. 8600 minutes is long enough to gather a week’s worth of intercessions, our fervent prayers for those we know in need—for neighbors, strangers, lovers, friends, coworkers, roommates … even our enemies. We pray for them now …
Break forth, O beautiful heavenly light. Break forth into the lives of those who are today covered in the darkness of grief, mourning the death of someone they love. We pray for all we know who are shadowed in grief …
Break forth, O beautiful healing light. Break forth into places of struggle and illness. Shine on those in need of healing and hope, cause cells to grow and hearts to heal and spirits to quicken. Shine upon those we name now …
Break forth, O beautiful Christ-refracted light. Break forth into the lives and homes and places of all those who walk in darkness—the darkness of doubt, of despair, of disappointment and dread. From the smallest family to the largest nation, where there is bad blood, bring healing; hatred, peace; resentment, freedom; wreckage of relationships, healing and new life. Shine your light, O Christ, in the places we name now …
How we thank you O Lord that we need not shudder in fear.
How we thank you for the angelic message of purposeful hope.
How we thank you that Christ shares our weaknesses
and makes buoyant our confident joy.
And usher in the morning;
O shepherds, shrink not with afright,
But hear the angel’s warning.
This Child, now weak in infancy,
Our confidence and joy shall be,
The power of Satan breaking,
Our peace eternal making.
Break forth, O beautiful heavenly light. Break forth around us and illuminate the world in which we live. Give us eyes to see what you see, O Lord: a world broken, rent, in a thousand cross-like ways; yet a world, being reconciled and redeemed by your love—with a million resurrection possibilities.
We come to worship this Advent morning with six days of living on our hearts: 144 hours of walking in the Way while walking in your world. 8600 minutes is long enough to gather a week’s worth of intercessions, our fervent prayers for those we know in need—for neighbors, strangers, lovers, friends, coworkers, roommates … even our enemies. We pray for them now …
Break forth, O beautiful heavenly light. Break forth into the lives of those who are today covered in the darkness of grief, mourning the death of someone they love. We pray for all we know who are shadowed in grief …
Break forth, O beautiful healing light. Break forth into places of struggle and illness. Shine on those in need of healing and hope, cause cells to grow and hearts to heal and spirits to quicken. Shine upon those we name now …
Break forth, O beautiful Christ-refracted light. Break forth into the lives and homes and places of all those who walk in darkness—the darkness of doubt, of despair, of disappointment and dread. From the smallest family to the largest nation, where there is bad blood, bring healing; hatred, peace; resentment, freedom; wreckage of relationships, healing and new life. Shine your light, O Christ, in the places we name now …
How we thank you O Lord that we need not shudder in fear.
How we thank you for the angelic message of purposeful hope.
How we thank you that Christ shares our weaknesses
and makes buoyant our confident joy.
January 27, 2009
Crowded Ear
In these shrill times,
with our thick filters
and anxious lobes, in
this season of proud
religion and excitable
doubt, when the only
measure of ‘truthful’
is my own tickled ear,
in the emptiness of a
cacophonous era, in
the vanity of my own
precious convictions,
speak, O Lord. Speak.
with our thick filters
and anxious lobes, in
this season of proud
religion and excitable
doubt, when the only
measure of ‘truthful’
is my own tickled ear,
in the emptiness of a
cacophonous era, in
the vanity of my own
precious convictions,
speak, O Lord. Speak.
December 24, 2008
A Prayer for Christmas Day
O Christ, born this night in sacred simplicity, conceive in us tomorrow a living, breathing, growing faith in you. Deliver us from holiday diversions and distractions, and in our homes and hearts bring forth in the morning gifts of awe and wonder and jubilation--that we might sing the praises of our God.
O Christ, giver of sight to the blind, open our eyes on the morrow, that we might see—not only the comfortable companions of our familiar lives—but also our neighbors in need. Remove from our lenses the cataracts of comfort and consumption, and give us eyes to see afresh the places and people and problems to whom you bid us go in lowly service.
O Christ, calmer of storms, of threatening winds and rains, speak tomorrow a word of peace—your quiet shalom—into any troubled homes and hearths. Where there is strife, speak a word of healing. Where there is pain, speak your calling to forgiveness. Where there is grief, speak words of hope. May the day be a balm for all who struggle in this life.
O Christ, present for all time in the Godhead, resident of heaven’s borough, break open our boredom and unstop our imaginations, that we might learn again to see the wonder and majesty of God’s glory—the livingness of our Lord made known in your life. May Christmas Day assault our spirit’s senses. Tune our hearts to sing your praise for all the ways you have blessed us with astonishing new life.
O Christ, lowly in your service to us yet Lord of all forever, we offer to you the Christmas Day now before us. Bless our homes with charity, bless our hearts with faith, and bless our congregation—all congregations!—with witness and work worthy of your kingdom and its goals.
This we pray for Christmas, in your good and lasting name. Amen.
O Christ, giver of sight to the blind, open our eyes on the morrow, that we might see—not only the comfortable companions of our familiar lives—but also our neighbors in need. Remove from our lenses the cataracts of comfort and consumption, and give us eyes to see afresh the places and people and problems to whom you bid us go in lowly service.
O Christ, calmer of storms, of threatening winds and rains, speak tomorrow a word of peace—your quiet shalom—into any troubled homes and hearths. Where there is strife, speak a word of healing. Where there is pain, speak your calling to forgiveness. Where there is grief, speak words of hope. May the day be a balm for all who struggle in this life.
O Christ, present for all time in the Godhead, resident of heaven’s borough, break open our boredom and unstop our imaginations, that we might learn again to see the wonder and majesty of God’s glory—the livingness of our Lord made known in your life. May Christmas Day assault our spirit’s senses. Tune our hearts to sing your praise for all the ways you have blessed us with astonishing new life.
O Christ, lowly in your service to us yet Lord of all forever, we offer to you the Christmas Day now before us. Bless our homes with charity, bless our hearts with faith, and bless our congregation—all congregations!—with witness and work worthy of your kingdom and its goals.
This we pray for Christmas, in your good and lasting name. Amen.
September 19, 2008
Tempest
Come, Spirit tempest. Move across our watery chaos,
bringing winds and water for disturbing your church.
Come ashore with righteous indignation: circulating
over our slumbers, troubling those firmer idolatries.
Come, Spirit tempest. Blow with Word-winds across
our complacent comfort. Shake loose from moorings
the lines of numbing entertainment; pry us free from
worship at the feet of Convenience. Unsettle us again.
Come, Spirit tempest. Scour our crowded lives with a
purifying wind. Prune away the deadwood of empty
words and easy sentiment. Gather up the life-litter we
so heedlessly overlook. Strengthen us for new living.
Come, Spirit tempest. Bring a howling, hallowed word.
Genesis 1:1-2, Acts 2:1-2
September 9, 2008
A New Day
A Psalm for Those Who Struggle
The night has now gone.
Another day has come.
In the anxious hours of the evening, I bore my soul to you.
I could hide no longer.
Even the darkness could not cover me.
Your word was heavy upon me—a yoke tightened with purpose.
The disparate elements of my soul could no longer cohere.
I felt your judgment upon me, your disappointment with my days.
Still, I opened my life to you, and you did not strike me down.
You heard my cry, witnessed my exposure.
You are—all at once—judge and redeemer.
I named my sin before you, charted the wayward courses of late.
Then I lay down in peace, unburdened.
And now comes a new day.
With the morning is a new beginning, one more Easter for living.
I do not deserve this gift, O Giver of all time and space.
Yet it has arrived, as sure as your history with me.
Help me to make the best of these unfolding hours.
Direct my steps, that each one will show your mercy.
Teach me to walk with a certain humility, grounded in your love.
The night has now gone.
Another day has come.
The night has now gone.
Another day has come.
In the anxious hours of the evening, I bore my soul to you.
I could hide no longer.
Even the darkness could not cover me.
Your word was heavy upon me—a yoke tightened with purpose.
The disparate elements of my soul could no longer cohere.
I felt your judgment upon me, your disappointment with my days.
Still, I opened my life to you, and you did not strike me down.
You heard my cry, witnessed my exposure.
You are—all at once—judge and redeemer.
I named my sin before you, charted the wayward courses of late.
Then I lay down in peace, unburdened.
And now comes a new day.
With the morning is a new beginning, one more Easter for living.
I do not deserve this gift, O Giver of all time and space.
Yet it has arrived, as sure as your history with me.
Help me to make the best of these unfolding hours.
Direct my steps, that each one will show your mercy.
Teach me to walk with a certain humility, grounded in your love.
The night has now gone.
Another day has come.
March 20, 2008
Another Lenten Prayer
I offer here a prayer written during this Lenten season by one of our confirmands—a seventh grader in our congregation who will, this Easter Sunday, be professing her Christian faith for the first time. It is a prayer applicable to all of our lives, regardless of our age or the length of our journey with Jesus. RWH
Dear God, Thank you for this beautiful earth you created for us. Thank you my family, friends, pets, and the opportunity to learn more about you. Thank you for food, shelter, and clothing that we have. I pray for my family, friends, and myself. I also pray for the people who are suffering from poverty and sickness. Please bless all these people. I ask that you watch over us and keep us safe. I pray that I will follow your teaching and learn from my mistakes. I also ask that you forgive my sins. Thank you for all these people who have help me get where I am today. Again, I pray for my family, that our love will grow stronger for each other every day. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
by Allison Mabry
February 23, 2008
A Lenten Prayer
As once again we make this journey to the cross of Good Friday, and to the astonishing empty tomb of Easter Sunday, we ask of you, Holy Spirit, that the gospel of our Lord Jesus will illumine this challenging way and make straight our harder paths.
As we make this trek, change us from within. Implant the living word deep in our hearts and cause it to take root. My we on that Friday die to all those matters not yet transformed by your love. And on that Sunday of all Sundays, may we be raised up to new life—fresh, lasting, blessed Christ-in-us life.
We do long for this sort of change, O Lord. But even when we do not, grant us the very longing we so desperately need to begin this journey.
Speak to us through the testimony of Jesus. Amen.
As we make this trek, change us from within. Implant the living word deep in our hearts and cause it to take root. My we on that Friday die to all those matters not yet transformed by your love. And on that Sunday of all Sundays, may we be raised up to new life—fresh, lasting, blessed Christ-in-us life.
We do long for this sort of change, O Lord. But even when we do not, grant us the very longing we so desperately need to begin this journey.
Speak to us through the testimony of Jesus. Amen.
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