Prayers of Church & Community, April 21, 2024
Westminster Presbyterian Church
The sun rises to warm the earth … birds welcome it with a chorus of songs … their music, a delight to the soul and a reminder to us all, of the greater things of God.
Holy God, eternal light,
Our world is filled with war and terror … missiles fly and bombs explode, people die and children cry, politicians shout outrage, and people pray with broken hearts …
The streets fill with protest and clamor … nations claim right from wrong, and accuse the other of wrong from right …
Do you grow tired of us, O God?
Do you wonder if another flood might work better than it did with Noah and his Gang?
Do you count the ways we violate your laws of love and kindness?
Do you cringe at our little loyalties, lives lived unto ourselves? The tiny circles of our love.
We turn, dear God, to Christ … not to escape our world and its sorrows, but to embrace our world and its pain through the Man of Sorrows, through the pain that Christ bore upon Calvary’s Cross, the darkness of death and the sorrow of hell he endured … the struggle with all of it, dear God, and the victory over every bit of it … his Day of Resurrection, when death met its match in the matchless grace of Christ.
O LORD our God, we pray for the nations of the Middle East … even now, as we speak, diplomats and politicians are scrambling to find justice, to find the ways of peace, to restore what has been lost, to rebuild what has been destroyed, to give to everyone a chance at life …
Remind us, O God, the road to peace requires much courage and profound skills … greatness of soul and mind … rising above whatever loyalties we might have in the moment, to the greater loyalties of creation, covenant, and Christ.
Help us, O God, to be people of conscience, people of learning and thought and prayer, people large enough in word and deed to reflect your word in Christ.
Remind us, O God, of our purpose … to love you with all that we are, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves … help us, we pray, to bow down to Christ, that we might stand up to serve … help us to open our minds and hearts to the greater truths of faith, hope, and love, that we might open our arms to the lost, the lonely, the weary, and the sad.
That in our work and in our leisure, with our classmates and our friends, we would bring to this world the bits and pieces of your glorious kingdom … thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
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.
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