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 ...
