Shared during Sunday Worship on June 23, 2024.
Dear Lord,
We come before you today in thanks for all the earthly abundance you have provided for us. We bow before you in awe of your eternal, unchangeable, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent reality. We kneel before you in gratitude for your holiness, righteousness, love, kindness, generosity, understanding, insight, sympathy, compassion, mercy, and GRACE. But today we are especially grateful for your GRACE.
Your GRACE is indeed amazing. It is like the air we breathe. It is unmerited. You give it without cost. You offer it before we think of it. You provide it before we ask for it. It is a unique gift. You give us this gift in the hope we will accept and embrace it.
Therefore, we pray that you would help us to accept your GRACE more often. Knowing your willingness to forgive when and if asked, we pray that you help us walk this path more often, melting away any reluctant attitude, rigid mindset, or personal hardheartedness that might prevent acceptance of your GRACE.
And we pray that you would help us also to embrace your GRACE. May we meditate on our lives and actions so we can uncover what the Psalmist called our hidden faults and what Jesus called the logs in our eyes. May the promise of forgiveness in the GRACE you offer lead us to make our confessions. May we truly repent, rejecting the idolatry of worldly things, and enter your Kingdom, able to grow in your wisdom.
So many aspects of our world are so disquieting and painful to our souls: the horrors of war, the upheaval of peoples, the cynicism of governments, the hypocrisy of politics, the imprisonment of poverty, the depravity of injustice, the animosity of group conflict, the sport of animosity, the disregard of neighbors, the egotism of individuals, and the numbing of souls.
May we remember that your GRACE begets confession, confession begets reconciliation, reconciliation begets peace, and peace begets wisdom. This is the Way as the Psalmist (Psalm 23) said to "...dwell in the house of the Lord forever," despite all the worldly disequilibrium and cacophony.
All this we pray in the name and Spirit of your Messiah Jesus. Amen.