Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship Sunday, July 10, 2022:
Loving God,
in Jesus Christ, you journey with us
through the whole of life –
through the valleys of sorrow,
to the heights of joy and contentment,
and day by day, step by step,
through the ordinary moments of our days.
We thank you for your abiding presence with us
loving us, sustaining us, guiding us
along life’s sometimes weary way.
As we seek to follow your way
through and into life,
help us set aside the things that distract,
that weigh us down, and hold us back,
help us fix our hearts on you,
and share with each other
your love, and healing, and peace.
Help us work together and with you
to see and meet the needs of the world.
For those who are hungry, we pray for food enough and more;
for those who are unhoused, shelter,
for those who are lonely, companionship,
for those who are hurting, healing.
We pray for an aching world – for the world itself.
In climate emergency of our making,
we pray that you help us change our ways,
stop us short, show us healing, sustaining ways,
that might tend and heal a world
teetering on the verge of climate collapse.
We pray for the dismantling and healing
of systems that oppress –
particularly systems of American racism.
Help us to see, acknowledge, and stop
our complicity in those systems,
rebuilding with you a new creation
that honors and nurtures the dignity and lives
of those who have been harmed for far too long.
As we continue through
a relentless pattern of mass shootings,
we ask that you heal our violent culture,
our idolatry of guns and of self-sufficiency,
and help us, as a nation, let go of whatever
is nurturing and feeding this culture of death.
We know that you are a God of life –
and that you desire that all your children
live and thrive,
so that they – so that we –
can grow into all that you
have created us to be.
Help us embody
your loving, freeing, healing presence in the world.
Loved by you again and again,
we join our voices with the voices of all 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.
Photo credit: Alexander Milo, used with permission via Unsplash