Shared during Sunday Worship on August 18, 2024.
God of light, we praise you for the longer days of the summer which bring us a chance to bask in the beauty of your creation and enjoy the warmth of friendships. For those special trips, those extra walks in the park, chirping of the birds and rustling of the trees, we find a serenity in the majesty of your artwork. Lord each moment of light leads our hearts to delight in you so we pray now for the gift of beauty in your creation and in ourselves…
Even as we take moments to simply basking in the joy of life, we also take time to pause and reflect-- to consider the ways in which we have denigrated this joy in others. Whether it is through greed, violence, apathy, or prejudice we ask that you would remove every vestige within us that causes us to judge others more harshly than you judge ourselves. We pray now for a spirit of forgiveness… a spirit of charity… and a spirit of love…
God of justice even as you seek to transform our hearts you ask us to take action. Help us to know how it is that we might bring peace amongst our family and friends; how it is that we might help others to discover their voice, to find their power, and to know that same abundance which we have in you. Help us to reach beyond that which we know that we might become peacemakers in your name. But at this moment all we can do is pray and so we pray for peace in the Middle East, in the Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, and even those places in our own lands in which guns and bombs try to solve the brokenness that is within each of us. We pray now not only for these places and ask for your intervention, but for your spirit to enter our hearts to know how it is that we might contribute to helping to remake this earth after your heavenly kingdom.
We pray all this in the name of your son Jesus Christ our Lord whose life showed us how to be the people of God and whose death brings hope to all. Amen
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