2.12.23 Prayers of Church & Community, Westminster Presbyterian Church

Eternal God, we are yours, in life and in death … there is, finally, nothing that can separate us from your great love, given to us in Christ, and given to the world in a thousand different voices, and values, stories and prayers, hymns and poems, a chanting priest, a prayer wheel in Tibet, the cries of a mother and father for their child … you are the God, supreme, of every tear and every broken heart … you are the God, masterful, in the ebb and flow of time … you are the God of eternity, woven into the fabric of every life, every creature, ever grain of wheat and in the tumult of the earth.

We are stunned, O God, we are heartbroken, by the loss of life in Turkey and Syria … death at

every turn … survivors marked for the rest of their lives - too many orphans … too many families, now without their children … O LORD our God, we give thanks for the nations and corporations rising to the task of rescue and rebuilding … the world proves to itself, dear God, what you have called the world to be - caring and kind, generous and faithful, mindful and sensitive, to the cries of bereavement now ringing across the globe. Can the world do better, O God? Yes, we must do better … and we will.

Watch over us, we pray … keep us mindful of the world, help us to feel its pain and sorrow … remind us that lament and a broken heart are part of the human story … shield us not from the sorrows of the day, but the despair of soul that paralyses our quest for your Kingdom, tempts us to withdraw into the comforts and distractions of piety or pleasure.

Bless us here, O LORD - remind us to say thanks - thanks to you, dear God, and thanks to all the folks who’ve loved us all along the way - our parents and grandparents, our families of birth, our families of choice, our children and grandchildren … and for our spiritual family, dear God, the family of faith, the church, all around the world.

Bless our Scouts, dear God … their leaders … their work. Thank you for those who’ve come before us … who taken the Scout Oath to heart, who’ve lived the values and virtues of Scouting, who’ve made this a better world.

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.