Weekly Prayers for the Church Street Family
Week of January 26, 2022
Rev. Catherine Nance
Loving and gracious God – we come today in praise and thanksgiving for you – the creator all good things. We remember that when you spoke the earth into being, you declared it good. As we stand on your earth and look up to the heavens and peer over vast waters and dig in the earth may we join in the chorus of, “It is good!” O God forgive us when we treat creation – your creation – as something disposable for our use. We confess we forget you called us to be stewards and not simply users of water, air, land, and space. Stir up in us a new commitment to work together to care about creation as an extension of our own bodies.
God of all creation, make us one in the body of Christ.
O God who knit us together in our mother’s wombs, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Forgive us when we turn to advertisers and celebrities for images of what we should look like. Forgive us when we are ashamed of our bodies; instead, may we take care of ourselves and know that you desire good health for all people. Give us a new vocabulary of wholeness and beauty; forgive us when we describe ourselves or others solely in terms of how we look or how we do not measure up. May we see each other’s bodies as sacred gifts and honor one another with respect, for you have created us in your image. May we see your grace in each other.
God of all creation, make us one in the body of Christ.
We thank you for the gift of your church and all the different ways the body of Church Street expresses itself. In each church there are members working together to proclaim your reconciling word and do your reconciling word; therefore we pray for all churches in our city and for all United Methodist churches, that our hearts may remain in communion with all, that that our voices might truly be pleasing to you as one song.
God of all creation, make us one in the body of Christ.
God of All Creation, we feel you moving within us and around us, opening doors, tending us in our woundedness, and binding us together in love. In that spirit of togetherness, we lay before you the most recent celebrations and concerns of our community of faith. As you wish the best for us, we leave all in your caring hands:
- Thanksgiving for prayers: Infant in ICU now breathing on his own
- Thankful for prayers: Safe travel to & from Houston & promising medical test results
- Gratitude: Cousin in Florida overcoming severe Covid complications
- Father grateful for prayers: has found a wonderful caregiver
- Grateful daughter in rehab center is improving
- Thanksgiving for meaningful weekend retreat for our Youth
- Husband feeling prayer support during his divorce
- Prayers answered: A house has sold
- Gratitude: a father is much-improved following long Covid struggle
- Thankful that meds are helping a member with memory loss
- Prayers appreciated for a friend who died peacefully this week
- Gratitude for Church Street clergy who work with joyful professionalism
- Prayers for a wife, mother, and community volunteer, for her safe & successful surgery on February 2
- Healing for all church members suffering with Covid
- Wisdom and guidance for one unsure of the future
- Healing prayers for sons whose father died last weekend
- Young woman in need of a transplant, for a donor to be found
- Guidance for wife whose husband has memory loss
- Continued prayers for two members in cancer treatment
- Prayers for cousin on life support following a stroke
- Comfort and direction for all in mourning
- Continued prayers: Ill adult daughter, severe effects of Covid
- Comfort for family of church member who died today
- God’s work within family – three youngsters whose father died recently
We offer this prayer in a spirit of unity – acknowledging that we all have differences that you call good, and that your love draws us into one spirit and one purpose. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ whose life, death, and resurrection makes us one and who taught us to pray…
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.
