O Silent Companion, we are again apprised of the numbers — numbers representing the ill ones, breathing souls who are beloved of God. When did it happen that our days were clouded by statistics? Numbers are meaningless when we must peer through a window to blow a kiss to that one cherished relative, when we must refrain from hugging that one hurting friend, when we attend to the needs of our own family member who has contracted the virus. “How long?” asked the psalmist whose own heart was breaking, and we fatigued ones put forth that same query: How long before this uneasiness is banished?

Forgiving One, in this vexing time of separation, we tend to heap our complaints and questions high, leaving them in little piles across your path. But you listen calmly as we offer them, and even lend your ear when we hand out advice on how you should fix what has been broken. We confess that we are full of hubris and lack the patience of the faithful. Give us that perseverance of the saints, we pray, that we, as they, might endure our inconveniences and misfortunes with grace.

Though the time of freedom remains uncertain, somehow, kindness and thoughtfulness thread themselves through our days, offering us their wisdom. It may be that the road stretches further than we can imagine, but the Suffering One walks with us, bearing hope. And even when the winds of dullness and routine blow rattle the windows of our lives, even when doubts hunker down deep within, his love becomes a blanket that tenderly wraps itself around every stone-cold heart.

Wrap all our hearts in your blanket of love, we pray, and especially these ones whose personal burdens are too heavy for them to bear alone:

• Gratitude for member’s successful bypass surgery yesterday
• Thanksgiving that lung pathology report was promising
• One is grateful for assistance in caring for a handicapped brother
• Prayers appreciated: Nephew with COVID moved from ICU
• Prayers for healing of a member recovering from COVID at home
• Lift up a sister-in-law who remains in ICU, but is improving
• Healing for a young grandson in D. C.
• God’s presence with grieving family – sudden death of daughter (28)
• Comfort for beloved wife suffering from metastatic cancer& her family
• That tensions surrounding the presidential election will ease
• Healing prayers for one recovering from delicate heart surgery
• Peace & assurance for daughter and granddaughter caring for ill mother
• For successful procedure: member having glaucoma surgery today
• Dear faithful Christian friend with progressive cancer, now in ICU
• Grieving family: loved one with COVID and pneumonia died yesterday
• Healing for teenage daughter, wisdom and peace for her loving parents
• A hospitalized brother, healing of foot infection, strength for family
• Pray for complete recovery from COVID for loved ones in hospitals and in healthcare facilities
• Prayers for one recovering from surgery on both knees
• Prayers for faithful member, in hospice care at home, strength for family

Turn our eyes upon Jesus, Good Lord, for his life mirrors what we ourselves hope to become. In all his ways he acknowledged you, so bear with us until we also arise each morning singing praises for all the goodness woven into our lives; and lying down each evening in peace, knowing it is Christ who is our Eternal Rest:

God of Today and Every Day, we are fragile folk and we confess that we have allowed fear to control our lives. Our hearts are tattered and our minds race as we wait for the next blow: “What if…… happens?” we ask ourselves. Calm our trembling notions, we pray, as we face the unknown. Even in the throes of governmental change, even in midst of a pandemic, even when lawlessness has become commonplace, even when we live in the shadows of a broken world, you are with us. Today and every day, Good Lord, speak your peace to our restless souls. We long to remain firm in the faith that we have openly confessed. And what we have confessed may we practice boldly.

Thank you for planting desire in our hearts—a desire to know you, a desire to be better people. You show us the faces of so many living on the edge, the homeless and mentally ill, those who are going through the motions of living, existing amid oppression and denied a chance to realize their dreams and talents. Our efforts to rectify seem insignificant in the frame of such great need; but as they have crossed our path, we know they are precious in your sight, and you intend our hands to hold out your grace and hope to each.

As we pray for all those souls who search for an open door, we also offer the prayers of our inmost hearts, our thanksgivings, our burdens and our desires known only to you . . . . . . . . . .  And as your mercy envelopes all, continue to guard these who also offer their joys and their deepest desires to your care:

• Gratitude: Beautiful fall foliage and more time at home to admire beauty
• Thanksgiving for all who are praying for the victims of Covid-19
• Thankful that wife is released from the hospital to recover at home
• Member celebrates the completion of her radiation treatments
• That tensions throughout our nation will turn toward peace
• Prayers for member having kidney surgery today
• Three members suffering from depression, that healing may come
• Prayers for friend having hysterectomy today, that all might go well
• Please pray for longtime friend in ICU, that she may overcome the virus
• Prayers for faithful Christian physician recovering from heart surgery
• Dear friend in Martin, Tennessee, hospitalized with Covid-19 complications
• Healing for teenage daughter, peace for her loving parents
• Staff and residents at local facility where virus numbers have spiked
• A broken family, that parents may be led to healing relationship
• Continued prayer for autistic grandson, for healing of recent symptoms
• Prayers for friend with metastatic cancer, comfort for family

Lead us, Gracious God, to live in the way of Jesus, who was engaged with the world, but who was not of the world; who took on the form of a slave, but has since taken his rightful place beside you in glory. By his blessed example may we live out our days, for it is in his name we pray all these things:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear…

Be still, and know that I am God!

I am exalted among the nations; I am exalted in the earth.

-Psalm 46:1-2a, 10

All-Knowing God, in whom we live and move and have our being, we come before you this day with hopeful and trusting hearts. On this morning after an election that may continue to divide us as a nation, we bow before you in complete surrender, searching for your compassionate and healing presence to guide us in our life together. Although the final outcome may still be uncertain, we know that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” How do we move into your future with new eyes, new ears, new ways of being?

Merciful God, grant us patience in this time of waiting, for it is not only we who wait, but the entire world. What happens here not only affects us as a nation, but all your children everywhere. You call us to be a witness to your reconciling power, an instrument of healing in a broken, hurting world. Open our hearts and minds to the realization that we are part of a global village, a richly diverse gathering of all your children, yearning for your shalom – a world of peace with justice, where equality is more than a dream and peace is more than the absence of war.

Compassionate God, remind us that, in this time of anxious waiting, there are others who do not have the “luxury” of spending hours glued to the media coverage of unfolding results and events. Open our hearts that we may hear the cries of those in need – those without work, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and put food on their table; those whose lives have been shattered by a pandemic that will not end; those who live on our streets, longing for a friendly face and a word of hope; those who live in isolation, hungry for the touch of another human being; those who fear for their lives, uncertain of a future filled with so much racial tension and unrest. All these and more, though invisible to us, are in plain sight to you. Watch over these, your children, and also hear the concerns from your Church Street family:

• Gratitude for a member’s successful hip surgery
• Thanksgiving for CSUMC children and youth programs
• Grateful cancer was detected early, only minor surgery required
• Prayers for God’s healing and a way forward for our splintered nation
• Prayers for young mother, relief from postpartum depression, anxiety
• Two sons with major addictions, that they may pursue rehabilitation
• Prayers for wife and family currently at Mayo Clinic, wisdom for doctors
• Prayers for young grandson with autism, healing of his self-abuse
• Continued prayers, nephew in Missouri, seriously ill with Covid-19
• Member grieving on anniversary of wife’s death and many struggles
• Sustaining dear friend and her family as they move her to a new facility
• Healing and guidance for family – husband ailing with very serious illness
• Strength for friend with metastatic cancer, wisdom for her physicians
• Prayers that a federal court ruling on November 9 will be lenient and just
• Healing of granddaughter (16) very ill with gastroparesis
• Continued prayers for young wife battling leukemia
• Sustaining prayers for mother in hospice care & her worried family

Break our hearts, O God, as your heart is breaking, and bring us to new understandings of what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. Emblazon on our spirits our baptismal vows – “to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” Free us from all that keeps us from joyful service and strengthen our resolve to walk the paths you place before us, secure in the knowledge that we do not walk alone.

Reconciling God, whatever the final results of the election, give us the grace to accept the leaders we as a people have chosen, and the willingness to work alongside them to bring hope and healing to your world. May they be open vessels, putting aside their own agendas to hear your still, small voice calling them to a life of servanthood. Keep ever before us that a life lived in service to others is the only life worth living. Following the example of Christ who modeled for us a life of servanthood that knew no bounds, we offer the prayer he taught us:

Praiseworthy Friend, birdsong and rosy dawn announce another fresh beginning, offered to us without cost. This newness that springs from your grace is a hallowed gift and worthy of praise. Though yesterday’s attempts to follow you may have been flawed, you hold out another string of hours for us to bear witness to your love. And within these hours, may the prayer of the ancients be our song, for they held firm to the truth, knowing that it is in giving that we will receive; it is in becoming weak that we will be strong; it is in loving others that we will be loved; and it is by surrendering ourselves that your kingdom will unfold.

O Lord of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, when we sift through our memories of years gone by, your grace and mercy are best revealed. And in peering through our rear-view mirror, we discover you at those most precipitous junctures: When death colored our family’s path, we felt you there beside us. When piercing disappointments, upheavals, and betrayals came our way, you made yourself known. When there were decisions of great import to be made, your Spirit did not desert. Lord, in the world of the present, turning points of grief, loss, trials and tragedy place themselves in our path; but because of your forever faithfulness, we move through them with a growing confidence. If you are for us, who can be against us?

Pulse of Everlasting Love, send a sense of renewal, we pray, to the hurting ones across our globe, that they might know they are not alone. We lift up the refugees stranded in lands where they are unwanted, those on the move because of famine or war; those in the grips of addiction and their families; those who are hungry and unsheltered; those who grieve what is no longer; and those who believe their cause is lost. To these, we ask that you also touch each of these concerns that are carried in the hearts of your people at Church Street:

• One offers thanksgiving for a generous unexpected gift
• Thanksgiving for the birth of a great-grandson
• Two offer thanks as they celebrate their recovery from Covid-19
• Couple celebrate the closing on their first house
• Safety and comfort for two traveling to sister-in-law’s funeral in Florida
• Guidance and strength for member raising his teenage grandchildren
• Healing prayers for a pastor with kidney disease and his anxious wife
• Pray for dear wife returning to Mayo’s today for further diagnosis
• One facing cataract surgery Wednesday – skill and wisdom for surgeon
• Healing for best friend in North Carolina with virus; that her family is not infected
• Young friend, newly married just diagnosed with leukemia, that calm and comfort might surround her & the family
• Healing of dear friend – young man in critical care, battling Covid-19
• Prayers for our nation, that bitterness and dissension might cease
• Sustaining prayers for mother in hospice care, comfort for her family
• Continued prayers for healing of beloved elderly mother
• Healing of young son with virus and protection of his family
• Granddaughter (18) with virus, protection for family, especially her father

We do praise you, Sacred One. You call us to surrender, to be at peace with our vulnerability, even though you know that surrender is the most difficult part of our faith walk. By your tender provision, however, we believe that Christ accompanies us, that the Spirit dwells within us, and that your love for us is unending. With these convictions, we boldly offer the prayer taught us by Jesus: