Weekly Prayers for the Church Street Family
Week of June 22, 2022
Rev. Tim Best
Gracious God, as we reflect upon Father’s Day, we are grateful for all men who have nurtured us and helped us learn more about your love: fathers, grandfathers, uncles, teachers, brothers. Thank you for special relationships and bonds that reflect your image of grace, acceptance, wisdom, and growth.
We pray for children everywhere – may each child know that they are loved by you. Open our eyes that we may know how to care for children – not just our own – but those in our community, in the schools around us, in our neighborhood. May our decisions and our actions all be done in an effort to guard, guide, and defend them. Give us the strength to protect them from dangers seen and unseen; give us the faithfulness to live holy lives in front of them; to never stop trying to be spiritually alive members of the church and ambassadors for Christ everywhere we go.
Loving God, bless us that we may be a blessing to our children. Help us remember who we are and from where we have come. Help us remember the things you have done for us in the past so we can teach them to our children. May we give them hope and enthusiasm for the future. May we give them openness to your holy message of forgiveness, grace, and love. May they too want to walk in the paths of righteousness. May your word live in them and for generations to come. Hear this prayer we offer today. We give thanks that Covid vaccines are now available for our youngest children.
Our Juneteenth observance just past reminded us of our shortcomings as a nation, and how we exploited the vulnerable, and have not traversed the road to equality as we have promised. Therefore, we pray for all who are still in bondage … may they hear good news that there is freedom in Christ – whatever their bondage. Forgive us when our own prejudices and fears have kept people labeled as other or “less than.” Overwhelm us with your grace that we might embrace all others as fully blessed, beloved, and created. Reveal to us the ways in which we benefit from the oppression of others and transform our thinking and our living. Embolden us to declare with our words and our works that through Christ all are made free.
And may that same overwhelming grace spill over into all the lives of these friends who call upon your name, both in thanksgiving and in need this week. In whatever way you will, surround them with the peace and confidence for which they long:
- Gratitude for safe passage home for Master Arts European travelers
- Family elated: Youngster with head trauma is now home, much improved since his accident, ask for prayers for complete healing
- Wife, caregiver, appreciates prayers & offers of assistance from friends
- Nephew thankful for prayers, his uncle died peacefully
- Thanksgiving for a festive church wedding on Saturday
- Happy couple celebrate their second wedding anniversary
- Couple thankful for their 53rd wedding anniversary on Thursday
- Family deeply appreciates prayers during a bereavement
- One grateful for all remembering him throughout his hospital stay
- Thankful for eager & energetic children attending VBS
- Church & family celebrate the baptism of 2 young daughters Sunday
- Thanksgiving for the life and witness of a remarkable Christian woman who succumbed to cancer on Sunday
- Prayers for adult son & family grieving recent death of his father
- Wisdom, safety for members suffering from Parkinson’s
- Safe delivery of baby boy, mother with worrisome complications
- Safety & resilience for friend boldly speaking out for children’s safety in classrooms & for protection of voter rights
- Prayers for member grieving death of wife, safe travel for a daughter & family traveling to area to offer support
- Continued prayers for all pastors in transition this week & for the congregations they will serve
- Strength, faith, & hope for an aunt entering a new phase of cancer treatment
- All working to bring about the end of the Ukrainian crisis, for healing, help, and hope for these suffering people
- Patience, continued humor, & healing for an uncle recovering from a stroke
- Healing for a brother in severe kidney crisis & for his family
- A strong bonding of all races within our community
- A fractured family relationship
- Wisdom and insight for leaders at every level to end gun violence
- Easing of pain & infirmity – member recovering from knee surgery
- Prayers for couples who long to have children
- Member recovering from hip surgery & colon perforations
- A new position needed: Adult son in unhealthy work situation
- For reliable caregivers to be found to help an infirm husband
- All working to end violence, hunger, and poverty in our community
We thank you for accepting these prayers offered in sincerity, and, as those made one in Christ, we offer that prayer he taught us, saying:
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.
