Prayer 2139

Night tells its tale to the dawn:
it has gently enveloped us in its velvet embrace,
opening our eyes
to the delicacy of light's filigree from the candle's flame
as our prayers ascend to You, O Creating God.

Almighty One,
we thank you for the darkness which opens our eyes,
reminding us to seek you always,
even when our way seems veiled.

Take us by the hand, Precious Savior,
and lead us deeper into the mysteries of your grace,
for we know our faults,
and yet your mercy continually draws us in.
Accept our repentance, we pray, O Lord.

Let our mouths be filled with praise,
and our hearts with gratitude and tenderness,
that we may serve you in constancy and love.

Pour out your spirit upon the turbulent waters of our souls,
and grant your peace to all who watch or weep, O Holy One,
especially those whose needs we lift before You.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2158

Bright Morning Star,
we seek your light and guidance.
You herald a new dawn for those who feel lost or alone.
Your light brings promise
of the dawning of a new day
 a day in which all things are made new.
Inspire us to focus on your rising,
which drives all shadows from our hearts.
And, we pray, be a beacon of hope and fortitude,
especially to those for whom we now pray.

Amen.
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Prayer 2137: Confession in the face of indifference

Almighty One,
you have crafted and tended the galaxies in their glory
and the wren in her spry industry:
we praise your wondrous works--
the tapestry of life, visible and unseen,
that supports us throughout the day.

Inspire us, O God,
to defend the weary and the oppressed,
the poor and the refugee,
in obedience to your law of love and righteousness.

As we confess the things we have left undone,
let us consider our own indifference to suffering,
our justification for inflicting pain on others
for our own comfort
or to assuage our own fears,
and let us turn from the darkness of cruelty and greed
to the light of love and empathy.

For by your grace we live and move and have our being,
O Creator and Lover of Our Souls:
may we seek to do your will
in the name of healing and restoration,
for the sake of this world You have made
and charged us to tend and preserve in peace.

Pour out your reconciling power, O Holy One,
on all who cry out to You,
and place your hand of protection
over all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2136

Holy is the Name of the Lord,
and holy are the people whose trust is in God!

Center us, Lord Christ, within your mercy and compassion:
make us bearers of your good news
and living testaments to your grace.

Gentle us and heal us, O Savior,
that we may work for reconciliation and peace,
founded upon the bedrock of justice and charity
that your kingdom reign within our hearts.

Holy One, watch over us throughout this day,
and spread the canopy of your mercy
over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Every December Sky: Sermon for Advent 1 C

I spent my day off on Monday, fully geeking out, reading and collecting Advent liturgical materials from all kinds of sources. Now, to some that might not sound like much of a day off, but I also had puppies to distract me and all kinds of mayhem that they… unleashed… to keep me from getting too far into the weeds. But I am enough a liturgical nerd that I enjoyed reading and praying all these prayers and poems.

I really am not a fan of winter, especially the days that are so short. When I was younger I thought it was kind of a crazy idea that the Church would choose to start its calendar now, when it’s dark and cold and dreary. But the more I have grown and come to embrace the season of Advent, the idea of pushing back against the darkness in these four short weeks DOES make sense, especially for today. Our collect for the first Sunday of Advent, written by the “Father of the Book of Common Prayer,” Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549, goes straight to the heart of the matter. Let’s hear it again: 

ALMIGHTY God,
give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness,
and put upon us the armor of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;
that in the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge both the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal,
through him who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, now and ever.
Amen.

It’s an amazing gathering prayer, which is what a collect is—it “collects” our scattered thoughts and focuses them outside our own concerns and worries so that we can assume an attitude of worship and prayer. And Advent itself is a season for us to pause, collect our scattered impulses, and focus on waiting. On anticipation. So it’s doubly appropriate.

This collect spans the full sweep of our lives, from the time we are born until we are united with the saints after we dies. It also pulls off the trick of talking about the two comings of Jesus that Advent focuses on: the coming of the Incarnate One, the Christ-child who will be born of Mary, and also the Christ who will “come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,” as we repeat in our Nicene Creed.

The collect reminds us that we can find the will and the strength to keep our orientation God-focused only through God’s grace. It is through God’s grace that we have strength to cast aside all that is comfortable and yet turn over our lives to Jesus, the Incarnate One who was and is and is to be.

The collect is hopeful and comforting in a way that at first, our gospel passage seems NOT to be. In our gospel passage today, Jesus talks about signs—how to look for them, how to interpret them, how to respond to them. And those signs can seem terrifying—including turbulence in the very stars themselves. The apocalyptic visions of heavenly turmoil described by Jesus that spin through our gospel passage brought to my mind the swirls of yellow in the night sky of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night.

Painted after Van Gogh had had a breakdown and had committed himself to an asylum, it shows stars and the moon swirling, vibrating, and spinning over a town at night. It’s as if Van Gogh was seeing the same celestial signs and portents that Jesus describes in our gospel. And yet, beneath the sky there is the sleeping town. And if you look closely in the center of the painting and in the center of the town, there is a church with its steeple reaching almost as high as the hills in the background. I wonder if that might have been comforting to Van Gogh.

The disaster that is being described in Luke’s gospel is the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The fall of Jerusalem had brought the world tumbling down to the early listeners of Luke’s gospel—and they wanted to understand the cataclysm they had been through. They felt bereft. They were afraid.

Yet just like in Van Gogh’s painting, there is hope in the center of our gospel passage today—hope and promise that we may overlook if we only look at the signs of tumult. And isn’t that the way it often is for us?

When we’re anxious, when we’re afraid, our vision narrows to only the threat before us—it’s how we were instinctually made to operate. Of course Jesus understands that. But that’s why he offers us a promise and a hope in the center of our gospel passage. The challenge for us as individuals, and in the Church now, is to collect our attention to hear the words of promise that are within our gospel passage today, instead of focusing on the predictions of destruction that Luke’s community had just lived through.

We have in common our feelings of loss, our struggles against the darkness. So often nowadays, it feels like we are besieged on every side by worries, anxieties, crises, earthquakes, famines, wars, prejudice, and hatred—and many of us feel afraid. Afraid for our children, that they may grow up and be unable to establish themselves in the way that my generation did, or that they will inherit a planet that is polluted and rebelling against our abuse over the past 200 years. Fear that they will encounter the racist hatred and prejudice that seems emboldened in our world today.

Fear is also a powerful weapon in the hands of those who seek to divide us and get us to turn on each other. And unless we consciously name that attempted fear-mongering and reject it, the darkness may overwhelm us.

And for the Church itself, there is the constant foretelling of our obsolescence. We are told that we live in a “post-Christian” age, and that religious faith is an antiquated, foolish notion at odds with reason and the post-modern world, a world where everyone determines their own truth, their own values. In the face of the anxiety that both Luke’s community and our community face, however, Jesus offers words of promise and assurance. There in the middle of the gospel is the promise: even though heaven and earth might pass away, Jesus’s words will not, and stand forever, offering us light in the midst of darkness. Even if heaven and earth were to pass away, Jesus’s words, and his healing love for each of us, abides forever. Even when it gets darkest, the kingdom of God draws nearer still. Jesus asks to come into our hearts, to be invited in to the center of our lives, so that we can engage together in the work of transformation and reconciliation of ourselves, of our relationships, and of the world around us.

Advent recognizes not just two, but three distinct approaches of Jesus: the advent of the Christ Child, and the Advent of Jesus coming in glory to judge the living and the dead, of course. But there’s a third Advent: the one that is ongoing in our souls, as we pluck up our courage to let go of our fears and move more deeply into the life of faith. The challenge for us as the Church is to recognize that we are stretched between the arrival of Jesus--the one two thousand years ago, and the one that is ongoing even now inside our hearts.

We live in the in-between—and we can let that make us uncertain, or we can use this time to grow deeper in our collective relationship with Jesus and with each other. At our best, the Church makes present and visible God’s ongoing work of redemption and healing in our world. The season of Advent calls us to slow down and remember that.

Thinking of Jesus's admonition about the trees brought to mind singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman's beautiful description of what that faith is like in the first verse of her song “Every December Sky:”

Every December sky
Must lose its faith in leaves
And dream of the spring inside the trees.

Now, there’s some deep wisdom there. The dead leaves have to be released, and when they are, the bare branches are then revealed, reaching for the sky with a naked longing that is all too often obscured under the cloud of green they wear for half the year. By December, even the most tenacious leaves that have rattled overhead for months give way so that the new buds can push their way through. Those leaves have to give way, in faith that there WILL be spring stirring inside those trees, stirring even in December, so that the forest can shine out with new life and growth again. The trees unfurl their leaves in faith of the warming spring, and they shed their leaves in faith even in winter’s grip.

The courage to let go enables the promise of new growth. That’s the lesson of December, and it’s one of the most important lessons of Advent. To let go of all that the old year held in promise of the new.

To be watchful and alert for signs of hope and community all around us, countering that drumbeat of division that beats around us. To slow down. To let the anticipation build rather than grab as if the good is going to disappear. To trust that God is active in the world, everywhere from a stable two thousand years ago to the wintry hearts of you and me and everyone.

That’s a blessing and benediction for us that’s vital to hear, especially at the start of this advent season of watching, of waiting, of preparing for Christ’s coming among us that is ongoing, as we are invited to cast away the works of darkness, the fears and anxieties and tumult that so much of our life in drenched in, and instead fasten our hearts upon the promise of Jesus to always be beside us as our companion, teacher, and Savior.

It’s the promise we hear everytime we kneel around this altar and receive Christ’s body, given for each and every one of us. It’s the promise we hear in the middle of the night when our anxieties swirl overhead like Van Gogh’s stars. It’s the promise that, through grace, we will be strengthened in holiness so that we may welcome the three advents of Christ into our hopes and our lives: our past, our present, our future. Welcome Advent, under every December sky.

Amen.

Prayer 2135: First Sunday in Advent

God of all Grace,
You are the source of all being.
You are the fount of every blessing
 and your mercy endures forever.

May we be ever watchful
to see the signs of your approach around us,
even in times of anxiety or fear.
Help us to lift our eyes
from the cares and concerns that trouble us,
and see your goodness in our lives.
Come, Lord Jesus,
as the Incarnate One,
as the Redeeming One,
as the Ever-Present One in our hearts.
Help us to be grateful for all that we have,
and set our sights on the Higher Ground that we have in You.

We thank You and bless You
for our breath, our life, our hope.
We ask that your radical love hover especially
over these beloveds whom we lift up in our prayers today.

Amen.

Prayer 2134

Joy comes in the morning,
as the Light of Christ illumines the world!
Lead us, O Holy One,
anointing us to your service for your Name's sake.
Make us beacons of hope and trust
in a world too often rent
by division and faithlessness.
Shape us as steadfast servants of your Truth,
that we may give all of our selves--
heart, mind, and soul--
to You.
Draw us into the holy mystery
of your abiding grace and mercy,
that our lives testify to your goodness.
Spread the canopy of your protection and blessing
over the hearts and minds of those who seek You.

Amen.

Prayer 2133

Holy One
You abide with us always,
placing your protecting hand over us when at rest,
guiding us toward wisdom all our days.
May we ever seek your face, Blessed Jesus,
marveling at your imprint in all creation,
our hearts overflowing with gratitude
for your love to guide our steps today.
Led by your Spirit, O God,
may we join hands with all in need,
welcome all who wander,
stand with all who are oppressed,
and proclaim your mercy to all who search.
Secure within your keeping,
we open our hearts to your mercy and grace:
gather within your embrace, O God,
all whom we remember before you as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2132

Loving God,
who is creating the heavens and the earth, 
end your Spirit to move over our hearts
as she moved over the waters at the dawn of time
that we may be renewed in a spirit of hope and empowerment
to do your holy work in the world.
Give us a thirst for wisdom
and a heart of compassion and charity toward all,
that we may live into your call as disciples, Lord Christ,
and proclaim your gospel
by the light that shines forth from our lives.
Place your hand of blessing over us, O Almighty One,
and, by your mercy,
grant your comfort and protection to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2131

Merciful God,
you encompass us in a mother's love
and guide and protect us each moment.
We laud and magnify your Name,
and thank you for the blessings You shower upon us.
Create in us the will to love,
to encourage, to persevere, to act
to bring about your kingdom.
Open our eyes and our hearts
to our brothers and sisters who need our help.
Help us to see Jesus in the soul in pain,
the homeless wanderer,
the person right next to us.
Help us to manifest your love in the world.
And we ask your blessing upon those
whom we raise up in our prayers.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2130

The sun gilds the clouds in the eastern sky,
and praises for the Creator ring from our hearts!
Holy One, we are blessed to be able to come before You,
and to proclaim the wonders of your love.
Heal us of our pride and our enmity;
call us into remembrance that You, O Christ, are in the midst of us.
Clothe us in your grace and mercy,
that we may be renewed and energized,
charged by your blessing.
Hold our loved ones in the hollow of your hand,
and shield them from every foe.

Amen.
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Prayer 2129

O God, You are our Help and our Hope,
and we lift our spirits to You in wonder and praise:
accept our prayers and thanksgivings
which we offer before You.

Merciful One, we confess before You
our hardness of heart,
the leanness of our souls,
that numbs us to the pain of others
so long as we maintain our comforts.
Renew in us a spirit of empathy
and a willingness to place ourselves in the service of others,
giving aid to the weary and hope to the forsaken.
Let us guide our actions by your commandment of love,
O Lord Christ, our Savior and Teacher.
that we may live with virtue and integrity,
and join in your work of renewal and reconciliation.

Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, Almighty God,
consecrate us and bless us to your use today,
and grant your benediction and comfort
to all those whose cares we lay before You.

Amen.

The Truth Before Us-- Sermon for Christ the King Sunday, Year B (Last After Pentecost)

In 1925, the fires of World War 1 still smoldered in the memory of those who had lived through it. And yet, even with the memory of the suffering and destruction still vivid in the minds of millions on three continents, nationalism and fascism began to arise in Europe, political movements who sought to gain power by dividing people into victors and vanquished, that sought to claim the right to empire and oppression as the natural order for humanity.

Movements that sought to enslave or eliminate entire races of people based on hatred and fear. Movements that sought to co-opt the church, as in Italy and Germany, and blaspheme God by aligning God with national interests, serving human purposes. It was the continuation of the struggle between good and evil, fueled by technologies of death and worship of might over right unimaginable in human history up to that point.

It was in this context that the Feast of Christ the King was first proclaimed. It is a feast that calls us to remember whose, exactly, we are, and the real power to which we owe our allegiance. In our gospel today, Jesus is handed over to the power of empire, and resists its claim of dominance. Jesus literally speaks truth to power in our gospel today. Governments rise and fall, because they are the works of human invention, but the reign of Christ is eternal.

Our gospel today consists of three questions from Pilate as he examines Jesus. Let’s look at the actual statements of Jesus in our gospel. First of all, Jesus does not answer a single one of Pilate’s three questions:

Pilate:
Are you the King of the Jews?

Jesus:

Do you ask this on your own,

or did others tell you about me? 

I am not a Jew, am I?...
What have you done?

My kingdom is not from this world…. 

So you are a king?

You say that I am….

I am a witness to truth.

Unfortunately, our gospel left out Pilate’s final question, what I think to be the most important question of all from this exchange. When Jesus claims to be witness to the truth, Pilate turns away. What is truth? Pilate cynically scoffs.

Thinking about Jesus’s claim to be a testifier to the truth brought back one of my favorite memories from the travels I have taken in my life. A few years ago, my middle daughter and I went to Barcelona with my good friends who are her godparents. One of the biggest highlights of that trip was our visit to the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia—Holy Family Basilica, the work of the great architect Antony Gaudi.

This huge church has been under construction for well over a century, and is still not finished. Its main entrance focuses on the Holy Family and the birth of Jesus. Inside represents Jesus's life and ministry all lit by glorious windows the color of gemstones. The roof is held up by huge columns designed as stylized tree trunks. It's spectacular and palpably holy.

But on the other side of the Basilica, the story of Jesus’s Passion is told. And one of the most striking details that caught my eye, among the myriad of details present, was a copper panel with this phrase written in gold: “Que es la veritat?” “What is truth?” Pilate’s question hangs right there on the side of the outer wall, and if you raise your eyes from there, you see the crucifixion scene. There you see the God who loves us enough to become one of us to redeem us and reconcile us to the dream God has for us.

What is truth?

That very question hangs over our society today as powerfully as it did 2000 years ago. We live in what some people are calling a post-religious era. We live in a post-modern world that denies the authority of anything outside of our own personal experiences. We live in a time when lies and gaslighting are the coin of the realm, the foundation of an empire of individualism that tears at the very fabric of communities. The empire in which we live is an empire built on exploitation of weakness, hatred of the other, and the denial of the sacredness of life and creation. What IS truth, indeed?

As a servant of the Roman empire posted to one of the most dusty corners of it, I imagine Pilate has seen enough of the world to know that history is often written by the victors, by the powerful. And Jesus’s kingdom is based on anything BUT that kind of oppression.

Jesus admits that he has followers—and in other places he calls them friends, and even family. Kings don’t have followers—they have subjects. Kings hold their power by force of arms and by fighting, as Jesus notes—and Jesus rejects that kind of kingship. Further, as we are reminded by our first reading being about David’s assessment of his reign, kings often claim that God is like them, rather than them being like God: notice that David calls God “the Strong One of Israel.”

We are all prone to do this, to be honest: make God in our own image as a way of resisting the obligations being made in the image of God places upon us.

In Israel’s history, the demand of the people to have a king is actually a rejection of God’s reign over them. The Hebrew scriptures make it clear that a king’s priorities are supposed to be God’s priorities, since a king rules over the people in place of God. And yet the three kings we hear of in 1 and 2 Samuel all fail to do that, and instead fulfill the prophecy Samuel had warned them about: they take the things of others, and tax the people for their building projects and their wars, and grab their daughters for their harems, and conscript the sons of Israel into their armies  so that they may at the least defend and usually so that they can wage war to expand their territories.

Pilate represents a great empire—one of many who had swallowed up Israel at one time or another. Asking Jesus if he is a king is Pilate’s way of determining if Jesus is setting himself up as a political challenger to the power of Rome. Jesus has been handed over by the religious authorities because they KNOW that he is a threat to their power, yet they do not have the power to put Jesus to death. Jesus avoids the trap they have laid for him that would have made him a rebel against Rome.

Jesus makes it clear, however. Jesus’s kingdom is not geographically limited to a certain place, or even a certain people, which may be why he refuses to call himself the “King of the Jews.” As Jesus repeatedly reminds us, especially in John’s gospel, the commandments or laws of Jesus’s kingdom are not based on keeping order or expanding power, but instead on love. Love of God, and love of each other. 

In our world today, we are adrift, bereft, cynical, and weary. Just like Pilate, we often try to preserve our own empires, our own edifices and walls that we tell ourselves are there for our protection and security. But really, those empires and walls just block out the light, hope, and peace that Jesus, in offering himself to us, offers to the entire world. No exceptions.

What is truth? We, like Pilate, ask this, often from either cynicism or its cousin, heartbreak. Often we try to find substitutes that will take the place of truth in our lives-- possessions, distractions, or experiences. We believe that we can set ourselves up as the final arbiter of truth, when we don’t even know what truth is. But just like with Pilate, truth is right before us. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” And beyond any earthly maneuvers for power, for exploitation, or for domination, this truth will set you free, and give you life and joy and community.

That’s the truth of Jesus’s life. He calls us to be the very best versions of ourselves because he knows that is how we were made to be all along. He has faith in us, and calls us to have faith in ourselves that a better way is possible, through the loving, healing, restoring touch of Christ within our inmost being. This is the truth to which Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection testify: God is love, and those who follow the Way of Jesus walk and live and move in and through and out of love for God but also, and this is the harder part, being animated to live and breathe and speak love for each other. Especially those we may think are outside our comfort zone.

The Way of Jesus was a threat to the power and empires of the world. Yet, periodically, Jesus’s followers have been tempted to claim that Jesus’s kingdom IS of this world, to claim that Jesus loves the same few people we love and hates the same people we fear or despise. But Jesus is not about power, but about service. As Paul insisted over and over again, Jesus emptied himself of all the privilege and power he had had since the beginning of time in order to enter the world as the weakest thing of all: a tiny baby born to a poor teenaged mother in a backwater not many people could find on a map, even today. Jesus represents the power of love, the power of trust. And I’m not sure that’s any less rebellious today than it was 2000 years ago.

Do we dare allow Jesus to reign in our hearts in such a radical, incredible way? Do we dare transform ourselves into disciples who celebrate Christ’s kingdom of love and compassion and healing? Jesus makes it clear that he is not a king of a kingdom on Earth. Jesus is king in the kingdom of God. Jesus calls to us—“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling, O sinner, come home…..” as the old hymn my grandmother loved goes.

Come home to true love, to a life whose only rule is to love each other as we love ourselves.

Come home to compassion for those whose terror drives them from all that they have known to seek refuge and shelter.

Come home to our own humanity, shrouded for far too long in fear, in anxiety, in a restless suspicion that our hope lies beyond the scramble we too often get sucked into.

The geography of this kingdom lies upon and within our hearts. Jesus’ throne is not built from compulsion, or force, or power as earthly kings wield, but through the power of love and calling us to take very seriously his call to follow in his example so that we may together live our very best life, one of peace and plenty for all, one that rejects the fears and divisions of this world. Jesus’ power as king over our lives is not the power of demand, but the power of love.

We follow Christ and obey Christ through the choice of love. Making Christ our king means letting love and caritas rule our hearts. Once we accept Jesus as our Lord and king, we are not done. Making a choice to save ourselves is easy. That is why true salvation lies in what we do for others rather than what we do for ourselves by clinging to Jesus like a lifeline. Merely proclaiming Jesus’ name will not bring about the kingdom of heaven—living out Jesus’ love among our fellow beings will bring about the kingdom of heaven and show that Jesus is our king. We acknowledge our king not by words but through deeds—through giving him the throne of our hearts and being his healing, reconciling hand in the world.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on November 24, and the 8:00 and 10:15 Eucharists on November 25, 2018, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:
2 Samuel 23:1-7
Psalm 132:1-19
Revelation 1 :4b-8
John 18:33-37

Images:
1) Christ the King icon, unknown.
2) Hitler Youth saluting.
3) The light in La Sagrada Familia, photo mine, May, 2015.
4) Detail from a copper panel on the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia, photo mine, May, 2015.
5) Jesus before Pilate, detail from the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia, photo mine, May 2015.
6) Christus Rex, unknown.

Prayer 2128: Last Sunday After Pentecost (Christ the King)

God of Mercy, Grace, and Love,
Creator of All,
we gather before your altars to praise You,
and open our hearts to be filled with your compassion.

Renew within us a Spirit of Healing,
and a thirst for justice and true peace,
we humbly pray,
that we may remember our charge
to be intruments of hope and change for good.
May we invite You, Lord Christ,
to rule our wills and minds
that we may be transformed by your gospel,
gentled and restored by your loving embrace,
renewed in love and purity of heart.
May we walk in love and companionship with all creation,
and care for each other as You care for us, O Savior.

Consecrate us with the oil of gladness and fellowship,
O Holy Trinity, O Sacred One,
and grant your peace and benediction to all,
especially those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2127

Early in the morning
we lift our hearts to You,
O Wondrous Light:
come, let us add our song
to the wakening Earth's.
Before your radiant goodness
we bow, O Holy One:
may our voices ever sing your praise!
You have laid our your paths before us:
may we ever keep our feet within your way,
that we may worship You in all things.

Lord Jesus,
You lead us with gentleness and truth:
teach us to ever serve You
and one another
with joy.
Make us
a compassionate, faithful people,
living into your gospel of love and faithful action,
we humbly pray, O Lord.
Help us to renounce
the fears and failings that lead into darkness,
and claim our place
within the Beloved Community.

Gather our prayers into your keeping,
O God,
and and bless and keep those whose hope is in You.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2126

O God, look with favor upon your servants today. 

Let us turn our hearts toward those who,
in the midst of plenty,
are in want in body or soul.
Let us hunger for justice and redemption
as much as we hunger for food.
Let us remember how love has blessed us in our lives,
and let go of discontent and rancor.
Help us to stop building a mountain of our resentments,
and dwell instead within the mansion of our blessings.

Give your protection
to those who are in danger from the cold this day
and set us to work to shelter them.
Comfort those whose needs we bring before You.

Amen.

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Prayer 2125: On Thanksgiving Day

God of Abundant Grace,
your love preserves us
and calls us to wakefulness and compassion:
we raise our hearts in thankfulness and praise.

You, O God, call all the stars by their names,
and set them dancing overhead to our wonder and delight.
You teach the birds their songs
that lighten our hearts and call us to joy.

May we tend to the earth,
and to each other,
with steadfastness and gratitude,
always seeing your imprint, Lord Christ,
wherever we look.
May we treasure friends and loved ones,
companions and fellow travelers on this earth,
and reach out to those around us in love and kindness.
May we seek to mend the wounds we have created,
and forgive those who have hurt us.

Holy One, send your angels to tend to those
who call upon You and depend upon your care,
especially those away from home,
and those whose needs we place before You.

Amen.

Prayer 2124

God of Mercy, God of Love,
we turn our faces to the rising sun
and tune our ears to the sound of creation
praising You with the stars and the birds.

Help us to choose to walk in the Way of Jesus,
that compassion may spring up in our wake
and kindness make the winter hearts we encounter
bloom like a spring meadow.
Let our lives sing out God's lovingkindness
and all we do proclaim the gospel of love and abundant grace.

Spirit of the Living God,
sustain us by your blessing of peace,
and grant your comfort and healing to those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2123

Precious Savior,
we turn our eyes, our hearts, and our minds to You,
opening ourselves to your call in our lives.

We kneel before You in love and humility,
and ask that You send us to serve You and each other.

Help us emerge from the valley of bitterness and doubt
to trust in You as we seek to truly love each other.

Tune our hearts to the song of the Spirit,
and may our prayers ascend as joyful song.

You, O Holy One, are the center of our being;
may all we are be drawn into the orbit of your grace and mercy.

Reach out to the searching hearts of your children, O Loving One,
and spread the balm of your love upon those we now name.

Amen.
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Prayer 2122

Abiding One,
You are our ever-present strength and help,
and we lift our hearts to You in praise and prayer,
worshipping You in gladness.

We give You thanks, O God,
for the blessing of each other,
whether friend or new acquaintaince,
for your surrounding us with companions to help us along our way
and for us to help along their way.
Let us welcome those we meet,
and care for the refugee and stranger in our midst,
just as You, Lord Christ,
show us how to do.
May we extend the hand of fellowship, kinship, and healing,
greeting You in the greeting we afford to each other.

Spirit of God, fill us with wisdom and goodwill,
with charity, faith, and love,
that we may embody the gospel into the world.
Grant your peace and comfort, O Holy One,
to all whose hearts are in your care,
especially those for whom we pray.

Amen.