7.10.22 Prayer of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 For this world, O God … we give our thanks … the world you’ve created … a world in

motion, fast and slow, teeming with life … taking shape in the blink of an eye, or a snail’s march across a few million years … a world leaving and arriving, evolving in shape and form … full of color, noise, energy, and power … O LORD our God, great is your name, and greatly to be praised … for you are the LORD of color and sound, the LORD of the snail and the LORD of the gull … the LORD of the seven seas and the highest of mountains … the LORD of every creature, great and small … the LORD of all souls, the LORD of heaven and earth, the LORD of times past, the ever-present moment, and a future striving to be born.

O LORD our God, give us, we pray, a deep and abiding sense of your glory, a reverence for life … to see your hand in the shapes and shades of the land, the miracles of love and birth, the cycles of time … the first breath taken and the last breath drawn … dust to dust, earth to earth, ashes to ashes … O LORD our God … it all belongs to you … a universe billions of lightyears in expanse and expanding … every moment, every heartbeat, every kiss, and every song. 

Help us we pray to live as well as we can … with love and patience, kindness and mercy, wisdom and expectation, goodness and decency … to feel the winds of the afternoon and the softness of a child’s hand.

Eternal God, help us, to find solutions to humanity’s distress … to find leaders who will speak the truth and point the way to a generous world of welcome.

Watch over each us, we pray, in the remains of the day; guide and guard our loved ones; grant them fullness of life, and an abundance of love.

We thank you for our church, for the bread and drink of the LORD’s Table … for all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be … for you are at work, O God, in all things, for good … with a love that never dies.

Help us, we pray, to be utterly faithful to Christ … in our toil and in our rest, in our families and in our communities … in the words we speak, and the dreams we have.

In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ who taught us to pray, saying:

Our Father 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 debts as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.