WORSHIP RESOURCESWORSHIP RESOURCES
Call to Worship I
Leader: Friends, we gather today to worship the One who gives to us Living Water!
People: Our mornings began with warm baths and hot coffee, and yet we recognize that in our deepest selves we are thirsty. Our spirits are dried out. Our lives are in need of the refreshment of God's presence.
Leader: Come, fill that unquenchable thirst with Living Water that flows freely into our lives.
People: We lift up our hearts and our hands, ready to receive the newness of Living Water pouring onto us and into our lives!
Leader: Let us experience the waterfall of grace made known to us in Jesus Christ as we worship this day!
People: Thanks be to God for Living Water! Amen! Amen!
Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Incline your ear, and come to me. Listen, so that you may live. Bring your thirst to be quenched, your hunger to be fed. Come as you are to the waters of life. Offer yourselves to be renewed and refreshed. Open your hearts to the waters of life. God's gifts are for all freely given. Let us worship this God of grace! (Based on Isaiah 55:1-3)
Loving God, you lead us by still waters and restore our souls. You offer us living water, and we drink freely. In this time of worship may we find in you healing waters for weary hearts, soothing waters for aching feet, quenching waters for thirsty souls. Fill and renew us in this hour so we may be like a spring of water, whose waters never fail a blessing to those who thirst. In Christ we pray. Amen.
We are fascinated when rivulets of water find their way to a meandering creek, then to a stream, which in turnflows into a powerful river, that finally empties into the vastness of the ocean. Small tributaries give life to seeds planted along their banks, yet flow on emptying them- selves into a larger, more life-giving force. From its calm headwaters in Minnesota to its rich silted mouth in Louisiana, the mighty Mississippi River is fed by countless life-giving tributaries along the way.
Today we gather with more than three thousand congregations around the United States and Canada to be "tributaries" to a "flowing river" of love and compassion and grace. More than three thousand congregations large and small, each powerful in their own way, each giving life and ministry to their own communities, will offer and consecrate gifts of compassion this day.
The gifts we share will give new life to refugees. Our offerings will provide tangible necessities for those suffering after the devastation of tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods both in our country and around the world.
Our gifts today will give food, farming techniques and tools to the hungry. They will provide medicine and preventative health education to the ill. Our offerings will make possible wells of life-giving water . . . water to be used to give thirsty people a drink, to irrigate crops, to bathe children, to launder clothes and to baptize new believers.
Beyond the blankets for warmth, the seeds to be planted, and the water to be drunk, our gifts today offer hope. May the flow of our gifts this day be shaped by the grace of God.
Leader: Gracious God, you have poured your gifts of living water upon us.
People: We are blessed with the gifts of your love and your spirit.
Leader: You have given us our daily bread and more.
People: We dwell in a rich land. Few of us know what it is like to go to bed hungry and awaken with no prospect of food. We flip a switch and have light. We turn on a faucet and have all the clean water we need. We have opportunities for education and the means to earn a living.
Leader: May we live in gratitude, never taking what we have for granted.
People: May our lives be like a watered garden, bearing fruit to share.
Leader: May these gifts be a blessing, bringing hope and opportunity. May this offering be a sign of our deeper commitment to share all we are and all we have.
People: During this Week of Compassion may we dedicate ourselves to a lifetime of sharing. May your gifts of living water flow through us, enriching the lives of those around us, near and far away. Through Jesus Christ, the water of life, we pray. Amen.
Since the beginning of time every civilization has developed around the God-given resource of water. In ancient times cities were built around running springs, on the banks of a river, by a lakeside, or on the shores of the sea. Today we may pump water in from hundreds of miles away but water remains as one of the centers of our existence. Water gives life to the seed in the dry earth that with the sun's light gives us grain. Water gives life to the roots of the vine that with the sun's light brings forth the fruit. Without water there is no existence.
Today we gather around this the Lord's Table. In our gathering at this table we do not have the element of water. At this table we have the elements of bread and wine. The bread to be broken is the symbol of the body of our Lord. The wine to be shared is the symbol of Jesus' blood; the blood of the New Covenant poured for many for the forgiveness of sins. We come to this table to remember Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Yet this table is about more than memory, it is about life. This table is the center of our life as Disciples of Christ. It is at this table that we understand God's grace. It is at this table that we know we more than exist. It is at this table that we know we have life, life abundant and life eternal.
Gracious God, you offer us a fountain of living water, ever fresh, never failing. Yet we confess that like thepeople of Israel (Jer. 2:13), we turn away from the fountain of your love. We, too, trust in cisterns of our own making stored wealth, power over others, the security of a carefully stocked and locked home, a safe community filled with people like ourselves, a lifestyle equal in wealth and opportunity to our neighbor's. We believe we cannot give until we are sure we have enough for ourselves. We nurse grudges and prejudices as if they can feed us. Forgive us, God, and lead us back to you. Your love is the fountain that never fails. Your living water sustains us, filling our lives. Relying on our own ways, we shut ourselves off from you and others in our world. Returning to you, our lives become open. Your living water flows through us, nourishing and enriching the lives of others. Forgive us for not trusting in you. When we turn away, keep turning us back, to drink from the fountain of life. In the name of our Savior, Amen.
Go into the world filled with compassion, dedicated to witnessing and sharing the gifts of grace that God has shared with you.
FACTS:
· Women grow up to 90 percent of all food for home consumption in developing countries. They produce half the world's food, but own only one percent of its farmland.
· The wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens in 1996 had more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
· More than one billion people in the world have no access to safe drinking water.
· An acre of trees can remove 13 tons of dust and gases from air each year.
· Five million people die every year due to water-borne disease.