BINDING SOUL AND SOURCE
Prayers for the Church Street Family
October 27, 2020
Rev. Dr. Jan Buxton Wade
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:
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.
