Prayers for the Week of April 25, 2021

Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship April 25, 2021:

Loving God,

you have created us

for life lived in community,

with you, each other,

and all creation.

We are created in the image of you,

and you share with us

your capacity

to imagine and create –

to dream and to build

new ways of being together

and of living more deeply

in loving relationship.

Living life together,

with each other, in you,

we give you thanks and praise.

We gather this morning in prayer,

bringing with us our need,

and the deep need of the world.

For those who are ailing in body and spirit,

we pray for your healing touch.

For those who mourn,

we pray for comfort and peace.

For those who are unhoused,

we pray for shelter.

For those who hunger,

show us how we can help you

make sure that everyone has enough.

In this week that has held Earth Day,

we celebrate your good creation,

and lament the damage we have done to your good Earth.

For a world in climate emergency and crisis,

we pray for clarity to see the ways we harm your world,

and for the courage and humility

to change our ways.

Give us activist hearts,

and the courage to find healing ways

to live in a world we may have damaged

beyond repair;

give us hearts and a will for individual and collective action,

that seeks to mend the world you love.

In this week that has brought accountability

in the murder of George Floyd,

we give you thanks for a glimmer of justice

and a glimmer of hope,

hope that our judicial systems

will at long last honor Black lives,

hope that we might

steadily and swiftly

really and at long last

live into our nation’s

long-broken promise of equal protection of law.

Our work is far from done.

May we see the work that is ours to do

and do it.

In this season of Easter,

we know that the power of Resurrection

is stronger than anything that does us harm,

stronger than any system,

stronger than any wrong we do,

stronger than any illness or circumstance,

stronger even than death.

We praise you and give you thanks

for the present gift and promise of Resurrection life,

with you, now and forever.

Living into that sure promise,

we join our voices with the voices of

all the saints who have ever called your name,

praying the prayer that Jesus taught, saying:

Our Father/Mother, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.