Monday, April 6, 2009

April 5, 2009 - Prayers of the People

We take these few moments of time, O God, to worship you … to set our sights on the best and the brightest … to lift our souls heavenward, to gain perspective and to find our purpose.

We thank you, O God,
For the power of Palm Sunday … a day to remind us of your love coming to us … to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves – to pay a debt you didn’t own, a price we couldn’t pay …

We thank you, O God,
For the great stories of our faith:
Abraham and Sarah …
Moses and Joshua …
The sea that parted and the rock that gave water in a dry and thirsty land …

We thank you, O God,
For the prophetic words of Isaiah and Jeremiah …
For the heart and soul of our faith, Jesus the Christ …
For his words and his purpose …
His cross and his tomb …
His resurrection and ascension …
His glory and his goodness …

We pray, O God, that our love may overflow …
More and more, with knowledge and insight …
We pray that today will be a day of further decision for us …
To give our lives more completely to Christ …

We pray for our President and those who advise him …
We pray for the leaders of the world as they grapple with the economy …

With gratitude, O God, we have hope,
Because your Spirit yet strives with our spirit …
You never give up on us …
Your love, tried and tested again and again by our willfulness and our pride, remains firm and true …
You are the light of the world …
The bread of heaven …
The Good Shepherd who leads us and guides us still …

Until the day is won …
Until that great getting’ up morning when all shall be made new …

Fill us this today with your glory …
Let us walk beside Jesus as he enters the holy city …
Let it be our cloak that covers the road for him …
The branches of hope that we have cut … to lay them down before him, for he is the hope of the world.

Help us, we pray, to dedicate our lives anew …
To enter into a living relationship with you …
For this, O God, we need your help …
We need your grace …
We need your great work in our souls …
And we yearn for this …
We desire the higher gifts … 

Dear God, thank you …
For these moments of worship … when we can grow a little smaller and Christ can grow a little larger …
When we can leave our burdens here, and take up the banner of love … to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

For his sake, we pray … even as he taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name …

No comments:

Post a Comment