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.