Prayers for the Week of March 15, 2026

Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship Sunday, March 15, 2026:

Loving Christ,

your love for this world is so strong.

It’s like a jar of perfume, broken in a crowded room,

permeating everything it touches.

It’s like the gentle caress

that conveys deep gratitude and tender mercy.

It’s like justice that rolls down like a mighty stream,

and healing that brings us back to life.

For your lavish love, we give you thanks and praise.

We long to love like you, and so we pray –

When it comes to our neighbors,

give us eyes to see as you see.

Give us hands to serve as you serve.

Give us arms to hold.

Give us feet to journey alongside,

and to stand for what is right.

Give us hearts of compassion,

just like yours,

no matter the cost.

We pray for a world we have damaged to the point of unravelling.

Stop our wasting ways,

and teach us how to love your world better

how to live sustainably and with compassion

in the new realities we have caused.

We pray for an end to war and violence.

Curb the warring madness of leaders

more prone to power

than to care and concern for the people they are called to serve.

We pray for families living in fear, and those grieving deep loss.

We pray for schoolchildren

for those killed at a girls’ school in Iran,

for those targeted at a synagogue school in Michigan,

for children suffering violence in Gaza and Ukraine,

everywhere bombs fall.

Cure our warring madness. Stop us.

Stand in the path of our destruction,

and teach us ways of peace.

Help us love as you love.

For those who hunger, we pray food enough and more.

For those who are unhoused, and for refugees, safe shelter.

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

We pray comfort for those who mourn,

this mourning especially for the families of Joan Basore and of Jean Holm,

two amazing women,

both beloved of this community.

Thank you for the gift of community,

for all the ways we learn to love here,

as together we serve the world you love so much.

Gathered in expanded community,

standing in community with all those who have ever called your name –

of all those whom you have ever loved,

we pray the prayer that Jesus prayed, 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.

Parts of the prayer adapted from prayers by Sarah A. Speed,

A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org, used with permission .