Please feel free to join us in the prayers we prayed in worship Sunday, August 29, 2021:
Loving God,
giver of wisdom and life,
you created us, and all that is in love.
You have created us to love
and to live life in families and communities,
in relationships of justice, healing, and peace,
to live lives of shalom,
so that all your children
might have enough,
and survive,
and thrive.
We stand in the stream of generations, and
we thank you and we give you praise.
And this morning,
we pray for families and communities.
We pray for families who are grieving
the death of loved ones in Afghanistan,
and especially the American and Afghani
lives lost in this week’s terrorist attack
at the Kabul airport.
We pray for the families of American service personnel,
we give thanks for their courage and sacrificial service,
as they died helping others find refuge and shelter.
We grieve with their families as we grieve and
pray for the families of Afghanis who also died in those attacks,
as they too grieve and mourn and ache.
We pray for families who fear for their future,
for the safety of their children,
for those who are now refugees, seeking a place to call home.
We pray for the wisdom of leaders to do better.
Help us find wisdom together,
and lead us into paths of peace.
We pray for families and communities hunkered down
in the path of yet another hurricane,
and for families living in the paths of wildfires,
and for those breathing daily smoke.
We give thanks and pray for the safety of firefighters.
With humility, we pray for help
in this climate catastrophe of our own making,
as day by day, we see the evidence
of the destruction that together we have wrought.
Help us do better.
Help us find radically different ways to live
that are sustainable and healing –
a better world to leave
for the generations yet to come.
We pray for families and communities,
who live daily within systems that oppress,
and particularly systems of American racism.
Give us the courage and humility to dismantle those systems,
and to look to the wisdom of those harmed the most,
to find ways of building a new and better world with you.
We pray for all who are ailing, in body and spirit,
for all who live with COVID,
for healing and a return to full health,
for an end to pandemic.
We pray for those who are hungry, for food;
for those who are unhoused or refugees, for shelter;
for those who are lonely, companionship;
for every child a better world.
Loving God,
grant us wisdom, and courage,
for the living of these days.
Trusting in your great love for us,
we join our voices, with voices across the generations,
who have ever called on you,
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 in the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.