Please feel free to join us in the prayers prayed in worship Sunday, May 16, 2021:
Loving God,
you have created us for life,
life lived in community.
In the Risen Christ,
you have saved us from everything that does us harm,
even death.
And by the power of the Holy Spirit,
you bless our bodies and our lives
with the ability
to bring your love to life in the world.
We praise you and give you thanks.
Loving you, we pray for your world.
We pray for peace – peace throughout the world –
and especially today for peace in Israel/Palestine.
We don’t pray for peace as the world and the powerful
too often understand it,
not for a silencing of voices that cry out,
not for a stifling of struggle
so that the comfortable can remain undisturbed.
We pray for peace that embodies justice.
We pray for an Israel that recognizes
the full humanity and the human rights
of the Palestinian people.
We pray for national and international
structures to emerge
that protect those rights,
that end apartheid,
that allow all people to live free,
and that, in bringing justice, bring peace.
We pray for all who have been harmed,
for the families of those who have been killed,
for healing and for comfort and for peace with justice.
We pray for an end to systems of oppression
in our own nation,
for an end to systemic racism.
Give us the humility to see the ways that we are complicit,
the courage to dismantle what needs to be torn down,
and the heart and imagination to build, with you,
a world where all people live free.
We pray for your world – for this Earth in climate emergency.
Lead us into ways of living that lead to more life
that repair the damage we have done
and sustain your whole creation.
We pray for all who are ailing, in body or in spirit,
for your healing touch.
For those who grieve,
we pray for comfort and peace.
Help us work to create a world that provides
shelter for those who are unhoused,
food for those who are hungry,
enough so that every child can thrive.
Created by you,
to live in loving and just community,
may our hands, our feet, our bodies,
embody your loving, healing, saving
work in the world.
Joining together, our voices,
with the voices of all who have ever called your name,
we pray 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.