Please feel free to join us in the prayers we prayed in worship Sunday, September 12, 2021:
Loving God,
we give you thanks
for your presence with us
every minute of every day,
from the moment you created us
and in the image of you,
your Word, alive in our lives,
your goodness planted deeply within us,
more deeply that all that is wrong.
We give you thanks
for your presence with us,
in all our journeying,
accompanying us through life’s challenges,
leading us toward freedom and life,
and always bringing us home.
We thank you especially today
for accompanying us
and your whole world
through pandemic,
urging us
toward ways of healing and life.
We thank you
for creating with us
ways of connecting with each other
in times of distancing and fear;
for giving us songs to sing;
for enlivening our worship;
for opportunities to say “I don’t know,”
(so many opportunities to say “I don’t know”),
each with the opportunity to lean into
each other and to you;
for providing opportunities to continue our work for justice,
even when we haven’t been able to be in-person
with the world we serve;
for teaching us healing ways
to try to live more safely, in-person with each other;
for moments to be face-to-face with each other,
even with masks;
for a vaccine, and the scientists who developed it;
for nurses and doctors and all in the healing professions;
for those who have led us here,
as we have Moved Forward Together,
trying our best to live faithfully and safely,
still working to bless the world you love.
We thank you for this moment;
for the choir and for music;
for children and families;
for the connection of conversation online and in person;
for a long, loving look at the real;
for resiliency,
and life,
and hope.
Great is your faithfulness,
O God, our creator.
Morning by morning,
may we embrace your new mercies
for us and for the whole world.
With all your creation,
we praise you and give you thanks,
joining our voices with the voices of all who have ever called on you,
praying the prayer that Jesus taught:
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 in the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.