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

Eternal God … your love is a perfect power, your power is a perfect love … and to you we turn, with hope and gratitude.

We give thanks for the rising of the sun this day, for the mountains to the north, for our neighbors and our friends … we count our blessings, when we think about it … and we pray for the gift to think, to think often, and deeply … about our faith in you, O God, and your faith in us. … 

Encourage us, we pray, by your Holy Spirit, to pursue our faith with all that we are … to be grateful and content … to focus less on what we want, and more on what we need … less thought, O LORD, on what we lack, and more on what we have.

We pray today for friends and family … if there is pain, may there be healing … if there is despair, may there be patience … if there is shame, may there be pride … if there is sorrow, O God, may there be comfort … if there is loss of purpose, may fresh dreams be kindled … if there is anger, may there be peace … if there is fear, may there be confidence in your unfailing love.

We pray for our nation, O God … our President and Vice President, and their families … for the members of Congress, the Supreme Court … our military leaders and the women and men who sail the seas, fly the skies, and carry the arms of war.

We pray for the nations of the world … for Russia and Ukraine, the nations of the Middle East, for the European Union, for the Pacific Rim nations, for China and Taiwan, Australia and Indonesia … we pray for our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and the nations of Central and South America … 

We pray for the nations of Africa … and especially Uganda, O God, and its move into hatred for the LGBTQ community. May your Spirit, O God, change the minds and hearts of those responsible, those who promote this terror, and may your Church, O God, here and around the world, have the courage of good convictions, and the good convictions of a liberating and joyful faith, because of the love of Christ, for every body.

Bless now, we pray, Westminster Presbyterian Church … and those who built it as a symbol of your grace … who gave us the Tower, that we might look upward, to find solace in your vast love, and then, with joy and hope, reach beyond ourselves to be the best we can be, and never lose ourselves in the moment, but keep ourselves in the majesty of your great love.

In the name of our LORD Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Peace, our Goodness, 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. 

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

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Eternal God:

We give thanks for this Pentecost day … for your love at work in all things … in all things bright and beautiful, in all things sad and broken … your everlasting work, your Holy Spirit work - to create and recreate the world.

It’s Memorial Day, O LORD, for our nation … we remember the dead and the maimed, the victims of human folly, that humankind remains suspicious and given to armed conflict … 

We confess our penchant for war, our wars and rumors of war, our failures to live with one another … Cain killed his brother, and we’re still doing it, O LORD … violence on our streets and in our schools, wholesale death in Ukraine and Sudan and Palestine … and other places on the face of your beautiful earth, churned and burned in our madness, our fear, our failure to live well.

Yet on this Memorial Day, we breath a sigh of thanksgiving for the soldiers who marched out to defend their land against the fascists and dictators of the world. Our policies, O God, haven’t always been the best, but our Constitution, dear God, our Statue of Liberty, our hopes and our dreams, have the ring of truth about them and the bright light of decency. Help us, we pray, to live up to our best intentions, our highest ambitions, our finest words of life and justice for all.

O God, help people of faith to be faithful to the best and to the highest found in every faith and philosophy worth their salt … Muslims and Jews, Sikhs and Christians, Buddhists and Hindus … philosophers and humanists, artists and writers, the story tellers and the dreamers, the scientists who search the heavens, and probe the human body; the engineers who build the machines of the future … versions and variants of the human dream, reflections of your dream, dear God … your dream, for a world safe and sound, healthy and whole - for all your creatures, great and small.

Bless our friends, O God … I pray today for Ann Marie and Stan - for the love of Christ in their lives; the peace of the Holy Spirit.

We pray for one another here in our pews, and those by their computers and TVs … to one, and to all, dear God, grant the assurance of your Holy Spirit, the joy and goodness of Pentecost.

Help us all, dear God, to make the faithful journey … to set our sights upon the glory of Christ … heed his call to follow him where e’re he lead … to know how fully we’ve been accepted; how powerfully we are love … and to set aside of some of ourselves, that we might have more of Christ. 

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.