Prayers for the Week of March 10, 2024

Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship Sunday, March 10, 2024:

Loving Christ,

you have entered into the fullness of life,

and you show us what it is to be fully human,

full of love, and healing, and grace.

You accompany us through the whole of life,

through all its joys, and all its challenges,

going with us through every bit of life, even into death,

always, always raising us up into new life.

For your presence with us and within us,

and for your steadfast love,

we give you thanks and praise.

May our lives reflect what is

to be fully human in you.

We stand with you in the midst of a hurting world,

and pray for justice, healing, and peace.

We pray for the people of Gaza.

We pray for an immediate and permanent ceasefire,

and an end to the siege and the slaughter of Gazans.

We pray for the restoration of systems that provide basic human needs,

for full and free access to hospitals and medical care and food and water,

and freedom.

We pray for peace with justice,

and an end to every system that oppresses and harms.

We pray for the dismantling of our own systems of injustice,

and particularly for the end of entrenched American systems of racism.

Show us how we must end our complicity in those systems,

and empower us together to build a world where everyone can thrive.

We pray healing for the damage we have done to the Earth.

In these days of climate unraveling,

help us stop our wasting ways,

help us find sustainable ways of living,

ways that help mend the harm we have set in motion.

We pray for all those in need.

For those who are unhoused, we pray for shelter.

For those who are hungry, food enough and more.

For those who are lonely, comfort.

For those who are ailing in body or spirit, healing.

For those who mourn, comfort.

For all the world: love, justice, healing, freedom, and peace.

You have created us for life lived in community,

with each other and with you.

In community with all creation, with all those who have every called your name,

we join their voices with their voices,

praying the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, 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: Acton Crawford, used with permission via Unsplash