Weekly Prayers for the Church Street Family
Week of March 29, 2022
Rev. Jan Buxton Wade
O Love, how deep, how broad, how high! Ah, Lord, we cannot fathom the love that willingly cloaked itself in human form and entered fully into mortal life, accepting all our frailties. Yet by your coming, you affirmed the value of every life; and by your suffering, you proclaimed that death is not the story’s end. We trust in your redemption, knowing the lives lost in this brutal raging war are not lost forever. Instead, they press us to open our eyes to the hate and vengeance that thrive in our world. And they have now joined in your eternal refrain that speaks to our world’s crucial need for love. May we become still enough to listen to those voices, now in your keeping, and also take up their song of love for Christ’s sake.
O Love, how deep, how broad, how high! We come to you with our individual interior worries: for those who are ill or unemployed; those who are lonely, facing grave danger or death; those who mourn; those who live in fear, confusion, discord, or danger. Especially we lift up those souls in sorrow who are known to us: . . . . . . . . . . We are aware, Lord, that our own behaviors often contribute to the pain in our lives and in the lives of others. Such admissions make us uncomfortable, but hear us as we confess our hurtful and thoughtless ways . . . . . . . . . . . Show us, we pray, how to move toward the healing you offer.
O Love, how deep, how broad, how high! When we were absorbed in other things in recent times, still you drew near, opening doors and setting things right. We reflect upon those days just passed, remembering your presence and mercy, particularly in . . . . . . . . . . For all the ways you enter our lives so silently and steadily, we are grateful. And in the conviction that your holy power makes all things new, we offer these prayers of praise and mercy on behalf of our Church Street family:
- Thankful for prayers: a blood transplant completed & friend recovering
- Help appreciated: dispute with a neighbor successfully addressed
- Thanksgiving for life & peaceful death of a treasured friend
- Prayers appreciated: a member’s knee surgery successful
- Thankful for prayers: mother’s cancer scans were most promising
- Member grateful for healing from desert fever
- Celebration of young son’s baptism on Sunday
- Praises for a wonderful Day of Missions on Saturday
- Four offer thanks for safe & rejuvenating spring vacations with families
- Member grateful for help of Parish Health Team
- Prayers answered: hospitalized member much improved
- Member offers thanks for good care & thoughtful friends, now home from hospital
- Gratitude: a member’s successful cataract surgery last week
- Prayers that an indigent mother may pass her driving test on Thursday
- Family & friends mourning death of cherished wife/mother
- For God’s presence with a lonely woman in hospice care, that she has no pain and that grace surrounds her when death comes
- Prayers for member in pain with foot injury, for guidance in treatment
- Remember in prayer a member in fragile health & pain, for wisdom in making decisions
- Family of cherished member whose funeral is Saturday, April 2
- Continued prayers for a mother recovering from a stroke
- Restoration of relationships within a family
- A nephew continuing to grieve the death of his wife
- Lift up grieving family – husband whose wife died at age 60 & their adult children
- Healing for a young nephew with cancerous growth on vocal cord
- Please pray for a pregnant cousin & safe delivery of her child
- For doors to open for a young professional
- Mercy for suffering people of Ukraine – for an end to the violence
- Prayers that a sister-in-law is able to carry her baby to term
- Daughter seeks prayer for guidance in caring for her infirm mother
- Healing of a longtime friend, wisdom for her physicians
- Sustaining three beloved women in cancer treatment
- Thankful for prayers – friend with pneumonia now recovered
O Love, how deep, how broad, how high! How you have honored us by planting in our hearts the deep desire to know you and to please you, a desire to be better people. We admit our faith is not the full faith for which we aim, but in your grace, continue to guide us by your steady hand. We would be yours, Lord, wholly and completely, vessels of love poured out for the healing of the world. In the name of Jesus, Love Incarnate, we make our prayer:
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.
