BINDING SOUL AND SOURCE
Prayers for the Church Street Family
October 12, 2020
Rev. Dr. Jan Buxton Wade
O One of Many Names, you have called us to be members of your blessed community. With our different origins and backgrounds, with our varying skin tones and physical appearance, with our mixed languages and dialects, we sing your praise. You stand at the threshold of this new day, with your waking words upon your lips: “Arise and shine for your light has come!” Indeed, may we answer in solidarity with your church universal: Blessed be you, O Creating and Re-creating God! How marvelous that the Light of the World seeks us out to worship and to serve in solidarity with all who call him Lord!
Loving God, hear our prayer.
We confess we are procrastinators. We spend so much of our time waiting for the perfect moment, that we often miss the chance to help another when their need is greatest. We worry about offering the right words, forgetting our mere presence is what is most longed for. We are frequently so wrapped up in the stresses of our own lives that we have little time to inquire about your hopes and dreams for us. O God of Second Chances, forgive us. Cure our persistent perfectionism, and widen our vision that we might understand that often the moment to act is “now.”
Loving God, hear our prayer.
Savior of All Nations, shower your mercy upon all who are in adversity across our globe, especially those caught up in flooded parts of France and Italy; people on the shores of Kamchatka, Russia whose waters are polluted; African villagers who have little access to virus testing; the starving victims of famine in Yemen. Next to these sufferings, we place the burdens (and joys) of your people at Church Street:
- Prayers appreciated: daughter arrived safely in Oregon
- One is grateful for recovery from virus – her confinement is over
- Gratitude: our music program & ministers that continue to bless all
- Thankful that a hospitalized mother is greatly improved
- Grateful for prayers, one w/ radiation allergy now at home
- Wonderful news: a family member is pregnant with twins
- Mother w/ leukemia, for stamina & ability to continue chemo
- Continued prayers for beloved saint (97) w/ virus & worried family
- Healing of a daughter, special ed teacher in TX with virus
- Wisdom & focus for member taking 4-day intensive course
- God’s peace & comfort for all grieving recent deaths of loved ones
- Healing of young couple recovering from virus at home
- Healing of beloved wife diagnosed with tumor, courage for caring family
- Healing for an older father with Covid-19 & wife who are isolating
- Protection from virus for daughter working at the White House
- Prayers for husband facing surgery & multiple stresses in family
Loving God, we know you have engraved your name upon all hearts, and all souls are under your care. Thank you for accepting our prayers. And as members of your own community of faith, we recognize your blessings seeping through our lives. Regardless of the highway we may individually be walking, may we offer your grace to all whom we meet, always remembering the Son who taught us to pray:
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 trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
