Please feel free to join us in the prayers we prayed in worship this Sunday, June 28:
Loving, Creating God,
you are the God who hears the cry of your people,
you are the God who sees us as we really are,
you are the God who raises us up, offers us a hand to hold,
and calls us into a future bright with hope –
Loving, Creating God,
we give you thanks and praise.
Created in the image of you,
we listen together for the laments of our day,
and join our voices in naming the hurt of the world.
We hear the lament of pandemic,
and we pray for your healing grace.
As cases of COVID-19 surge across the country,
we pray for all those who are sick,
particularly those in intensive care,
for healing and for comfort.
We pray for nurses and doctors
and all who work in hospitals and the healing professions,
gird them with strength and tender mercy.
We pray for individual and collective wisdom,
to find ways of living, and discipline for living,
that will lead toward collective health and healing.
We pray for an end to pandemic.
We hear the lament that continues to rise up
out of this country’s longstanding racism.
We pray for hearts to hear the pain and hurt,
and for the humility and will to stop participating in the harm
and to dismantle the systems that perpetuate that harm.
We hear the lament of a planet in climate emergency,
its groaning under our abuse,
and we pray for the courage to find our way
to sustainable ways of living on this planet.
We hear the laments of so many hurts,
and we know our own, we pray:
healing for every hurt,
enough food for everyone who is hungry,
shelter for those living on the street,
a living wage for those who have been displaced from work,
comfort and companionship for every moment of loneliness.
We thank you for the life you give us to live in community,
for the gift of sharing each other’s lament,
and for claiming together hope,
may we create with you – and with all creation –
a new and a better world.
Now, in the community of all you have created,
with everyone in every time and place,
who has ever called on you,
we pray the prayer that Jesus taught:
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.