BINDING SOUL AND SOURCE
Daily Prayers of the Church Street family
August 6, 2020
Pastor Jan
Elusive Creator, our origins are in you, and we have long yearned to glimpse your face. Is your skin a lustrous ebony, pink as a mimosa blossom, or of a yellow tint? Are your eyes multi-colored, black as coal, or green as newly mown grass? Even the great masters tried to capture your essence, though their renderings were generally as lifeless and uninspiring as our own musings. We know you are beyond description and your ways inscrutable, for the psalmist long ago declared you to be unsearchable. Still, you did create us with this curiosity. And it just may be that curiosity leads to hope, hope leads to truth, truth leads to trust, and trust leads to faith. Good Lord, faith is what we need!
God of a Thousand Faces, because you are beyond us, we will never be able to know you completely – your radiance is more than we could bear. Rather, you choose to come as a gift, as an unexpected visitor who goes by another name: the grocer who answers a complaint with understanding; the brave nurse who takes our virus sample; the pharmacist who exhibits patience, though weariness is in her eyes; the child who blows a kiss through the window, leaving his fingerprints on the glass. Help us to be ready to receive you, Lord, opening our eyes to behold you in unknown faces. May we become as the Benedictines, who, in observing the stranger, always ask: “Is that you, Jesus? Please tarry awhile!”
Thank you for opening our hearts to the ways in which you are healing us and drawing us closer together as a family of faith. Our celebrations and our worries we freely share with you, Our Constant Hope, and with our brothers and sisters in Christ, for your grace permeates all situations:
- Gratitude: member physician is excited to open a new practice (St. Louis)
- Isolated member sends gratitude for all notes & calls from other members
- Family celebrates a son-in-law’s important promotion at work
- Thanksgiving: a father is recovering from pneumonia, now out of ICU
- Dental worker grateful: she & coworkers have remained healthy throughout the past 3 months
- Prayers appreciated: no blockages detected in a heart cath procedure
- Mother thankful that paramedic daughter working in TX remains healthy
- Pray for guidance & peace for one facing cancer surgery
- Comfort for co-worker who has lost 3 family members to virus
- Courage & tolerance for member taking new cancer treatment
- Healing for dear friend with diabetes, asthma & Covid-19
- Recovery for a family of 3, all suffering with virus infection
- Calm, healing for cherished wife & mother having surgery Monday
- Healing for 92-yr-old friend with virus, that illness is not transmitted
- Sister who suffered broken leg & her husband who has lung cancer, both have diabetes
- Young mother with Covid-19, protection for her husband and son
- Dear friend fighting cancer & family awaiting virus test results
- Prayers that legal mediation goes well on Monday
- Healing – Friend in TX with virus, safety for his caregiver sister
Yes, you are veiled in mystery, O God, but we cling to our memories of Jesus, the Eternal Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us. We remember how he understood our everyday questions and problems, how he identified with the meek and shabby, and how he himself elevated the common, routine life to something sacred. Such memories are really all we need to hold us steady, so accept, we pray, all our prayers this day in the name of Christ:
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.
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