Pastoral Prayers

O God,

whose love is beyond our imagining, yet present in this very moment to caress our souls and heal our wounds, hear our prayer of gratitude and praise. In all weeks you look with compassion, with eyes that seeing us still love us, with grace that knowing us still offers abundance to our need. Make us a people who, secure always in the knowledge that you provide enough, are quick to give thanks and eager to share our bounty with each other and all your children. Week by week we gather at your table of compassion to be reminded and to experience anew your life freely given. As you fill our hearts and fill our hands at that table send us forth to give to those whose thirst is burning, whose lives are empty, whose hopes are bound to a community that cares and responds.

This day we give thanks for your church that can include us as givers and receivers of grace. Bless the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) wherever it serves this day in your name. Bless its leadership, its efforts, its generosity, its connections with the universal church in every place where gift and need touch. We thank you for the Week of Compassion, for Johnny Wray and his leadership. Call this congregation to ever greater faithfulness in this community that we might have the courage to reach beyond what we have dreamed to your bountiful vision for our lives and ministry.

Include this day, this hour in your gracious touch all those whose names we have mentioned in print, in word, in our hearts who long to know your presence in time of need. Help us to see the faces and know the deep needs of your people, our brothers and sisters. Be with _____, and _____, and _____ and with others who need a light in their darkness, a hopeful word for the days ahead. Open our eyes to see how we might serve them as we serve each other in this congregation. Bind us in your peace and unity that we might increase the strength of our witness and service by offering it with many hands directed with one mind and one spirit. Even now may all those we pray for here and all over this small planet be lifted by the

prayers of your church to hopeful and healing places. Give us all your peace. Surround us with your love. Lead us forward on a journey of caring that never ends and never gives up.

Create in us the mind and heart that was in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is his spirit, his living and dying and new life that compels us to be in this place and calls us to dare to speak our soul's desires. Hear our voices and our hearts as he taught us to pray . . . "Our Father . . ."

O vast and holy God,

through whose love the whole world took shape and form; in whose love we are born and live and die; before whose love we dare come with all that we are, grant to us, we pray, that deep silence of the heart that we might hear what you forever say to us. Grant that we might hear that we are never separated from the love that created us, the love that urges us to be more than we are. Bring us fully into your holy, healing presence and immerse our waiting, wanting spirits.

O God, you have placed before us life and death, and you bid us choose life. Indeed, Holy God, your way is life, your will for your creation is life, you are life itself. Forgive us when we choose death, when we mistake life for death, when we consciously and unconsciously make decisions that rob us and others of life.

God, we acknowledge the terrible power for life or death we as a nation and people hold over so much of the world. We have the economic and political power to control the destiny of other nations; we have the military might to destroy life itself.

But we also possess the means and methods to bring life, to eliminate hunger, to combat disease, to eradicate poverty, to advance justice, to build peace. Indeed, this Week of Compassion reminds us how the choice of life or death still begs to be made.

Grant us, we beseech you, the wisdom and the will and the courage to be people who choose life for ourselves, for others and for the world. In the name of our Savior and Servant, Jesus Christ who shows us the way of life, who is indeed the Life

itself, and who is now the very life within our prayers. Amen.

We praise you this day,

merciful God, as the one who brightens our lives with your love, who gives us visions of what can be that sustain us in the long in-between times of life. We thank you for the gifts of joy and gladness. We thank you also for the assurance of your presence in life's shadows. We thank you for the promise of power to deal with the darker side of our own natures.

Hear, we pray, our petitions of intercession. We pray for the lonely, for the bereaved, for the sick, for the aged, for those who feel overwhelmed by personal problems. We ask, on their behalf, for the comfort of your presence.

We pray for our colleagues at work; we pray for our friends; we pray for the members of our families. Grant to them, and to us, the gift of honest love.

We pray for the poor, for the dispossessed, for the homelessnot as abstractions but as flesh-and-blood women, and children, and men who have been battered by life. Grant them food, shelter, healing, and a special portion of joy. Send into their midst agents of your reconciliation who are able to make real for them your compassion.

We pray for those persons who have an abundance of things, but who are the prisoners of their own possessions. We ask for them the gift of freedom.

And as always we bring to you our deepest longings. Be our companion when we are lonely. Be our comfort when we struggle with difficult issues. Be our stubborn friend when we seek to run away from ourselves. Be our comforter when we weep. Be our hope when we despair about the future. Be our joy when we are depressed. Be the healer of our souls when we are wounded. For we pray in the name of Jesus our Lord, who permits us to pray, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . ."