10.30.22 Prayers of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

Give us your ears, O God, to hear the blood of Abel crying from the earth … to hear the lament of the lost … the cry of the frightened … give us your ears, O God, to hear the sounds angels singing in the highest of heavens, and the sounds of life all around us … every word of hope, every song of peace … give us your ears, we pray, to hear the whole song of the earth … the sweet refrains of love, and the laments of loss.

Holy is your name, O God … worthy of our praise and our prayers … for you are the God of hope, the God of peace and the God love … you hear every prayer in every tongue … you answer every prayer with tender regard and mercy. 

With faith, hope, and love, O God, we worship you in this place of peace and welcome … we set aside the cares and worries of the day … we lay down our burdens at the foot of the cross … we tarry with Christ in that darkness, to find the light of love … 

With the saints of old, we join in the chorus of hope … that our lives count for great things … that every prayer we utter spins this world a bit closer to you … 

In these moments of prayer and contemplation, we pray for those in distress … and especially we pray for Ukraine and the powers that be, that the present conflict escalate no further, that wise heads and thoughtful hearts would find a just peace.

We pray the youth of our nation … that we’ll do well by them … with good schools and safe neighborhoods … with plenty of family support and social wisdom. Remind us, O God, that we are all sisters and brothers of one another, that the welfare of one is the welfare of all … do not let us slide, we pray, into sectarian camps and social constructs hedged by walls and suspicion. For we are of Christ, O God. The Christ of the world, and not the Christ of the few.

All of this, 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.