Prayers for the Week of March 13, 2022

Artwork: "Enough,"

created by Rev. T. Denise Anderson,

used with permission via SanctifiedArts

Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship this Sunday, March 13, 2022:

Holy, loving, mothering God,

today, we pray for peace.

You have created this world

for your creation to love and to enjoy life

with you and with each other forever.

Yet, again and again,

we have broken what you have made,

what you have so lovingly entrusted to our care.

The world cries out,

and we trust in you

to be our stronghold,

to teach us love and justice,

that we might change our ways

and restore your world to peace.

We pray for the people of the Ukraine,

and for an end to the war waged there.

Cure our warring madness,

bend our will to your will –

we pray for an end to our own violence

knowing that you long to shelter all your children

as a mother hen loves and shelters her brood.

We pray for all who are displaced

by violence and war and climate catastrophe,

for those displaced from their homes in the Ukraine,

and for those displaced from their homes

in Afghanistan, and Haiti, and Central America,

those displaced anywhere and everywhere

by the violence we do to each other and to the planet.

Help those displaced find shelter and safe harbor.

Help us open our hearts and minds

and borders and ways of living,

that we might extend a welcome

as broad and as expansive

as the welcome we have experienced in Jesus Christ.

We pray for peace, knowing that peace only comes with justice.

Where there is no justice, there is no peace.

And so we pray for an end to systems of injustice

that harm so many, particularly systems of American racial injustice.

Help us to see the ways we participate,

to stop, to dismantle, to repair,

to follow the leadership of those who have been harmed the most,

building together and with you a world where everyone lives free.

We lift up the laments and needs of this world and of our own lives –

for those who are hungry,

we pray for food enough not only to survive, but to thrive;

for those unhoused, we pray for shelter,

giving thanks particularly for the work of the Marin Street Chaplaincy;

for those who are lonely, we pray for companionship;

for those who are ailing, we pray for healing;

for every hurt, may your healing love,

be alive and embodied in us.

Praying with all your children down through the generations,

all around the world, on out into forever,

we join our voices with their voices,

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.

Artwork: “Under God’s Wing,"

created by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity,

used with permission via SanctifiedArts