Please join us in the prayers prayed in worship this Sunday, February 21, 2021. This Lenten season, we are embracing the theme "Blessing for the Journey." The prayers below begin with a part of a Franciscan blessing offered in worship. That blessing flows into some questions for reflection, and then the prayers for the morning.
May God bless our prayer, so that we might live deeply and from the hart.
Blessing
May God bless you with discomfort –
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships –
so that you may live deeply and from the heart.
Questions for Reflection
· What are the easy answers that you are clinging to?
· What are your half-truths? Where does it feel hard and scary to move into the whole truth? The full truth?
· What are your superficial relationships? Those relationships that may be on hold or stagnant until you choose to go deeper? Your relationship with family? Or friends? Or the church? Or the poor?
· In your life, and in our world, what’s going on in the room, that’s not getting said?
Morning Prayers
Blessed are you, God of Mercy,
Maker of all that is.
You have created us,
and sustained us,
and brought us to this day.
May we live this day for you.
We bring to you
the needs of the world
the glimpses of need known to us,
and ask that you open our hearts
even more expansively.
We pray for those who hunger
and for the poor,
may we share our bread
and work to build a world
where they and everyone
have enough.
We pray shelter for those who are unhoused,
comfort for those who grieve,
healing for those who are sick.
We pray for those who are suffering in pandemic.
We pray for doctors, and nurses, and public health officials.
We pray for courage and discipline
to persist in collective action that might
turn the tide of this disease
and bring an end to pandemic.
We pray for a world in climate emergency,
with systems that support life on the verge of collapse.
May we see this world with honest eyes,
and change our ways.
We pray for an end to systemic racism,
and for deeper awareness of our own complicity,
that we might change and repair this world with you.
We pray that you will bless us with discomfort
at easy answers that don’t take these deep needs
seriously enough.
Keep them ever before us, and let us squirm,
until our bodies move into action
that satisfies the deep need of the world
in all its parched places.
God of mercy,
who confronts us with the truth of us,
encourage us to live deeply and from the heart,
that the hungry might be fed,
and your world made whole.
In solidarity with each other, and all creation,
and all who have ever called on your name,
we join our voices with theirs,
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.