Prayers for the Week of March 20, 2022

Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship Sunday, March 20, 2022:

God of every blessing,

you fill the world with beauty and with life,

and plant us in it to live and love and thrive.

We praise you,

and give you thanks

for fig trees,

and vineyards,

and every living thing,

for birds that fill the skies with song,

for every creature that swims the seas,

for all who inhabit the lands together,

for star, and sun, and moon,

for the gift of living life

together and with you.

Trusting in the expanse of your grace

and the wideness of your mercy,

we bring to you the ache and trouble of the world,

and ask for healing,

even if it means changing us and the ways we live our lives.

We pray for the Earth

as it careens toward climate catastrophe of our making.

Forgive us

and help us abandon destructive ways of consumption,

and embrace ways of living sustainably,

we pray for healing of the land and waters and air,

and where the damage we have done is no longer reversible,

we pray for courage and vision to find new ways of living

that honor, respect, and nurture every bit of your creation.

We pray for an end to systems of oppression,

particularly American systemic racism.

Help us to see clearly how those systems work,

to dismantle what needs to be taken down,

and to see our complicity, and stop,

and to join the work of repair and rebuilding.

We pray for and end to war,

and for all those suffering from the war in Ukraine,

for those who have remained,

for those who have fled,

for all in the midst of trauma

of seeing their homes and homeland destroyed.

Cure our warring madness,

bend our will to thy control,

help us embody your peace.

We pray for all who are hurting,

we pray for an end to pandemic,

for those who are ailing in body or spirit,

we pray for healing,

for those who are hungry, food to survive and thrive,

for those who are unhoused, shelter,

for those who are lonely, companionship.

Loving God, bring the world even more deeply

into an experience of the Resurrection life we find in you,

Help us build a world with you,

where folks together till the soil of new creation –

so that everyone can live, and thrive, and bear abundant fruit in season.

With all who have ever called on you,

in every time and place,

we pray the prayer that Jesus taught, praying:

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.