Labor Day represents a natural and annual change of pace. Summer is almost over, and a new program year begins for nearly everyone. Today we are thinking about what labor means, and about what are different kinds of labor. As Christians, we are workers for God, and theoretically if not actually, everything we do should be a labor of love on behalf of our Creator and Sustainer. Therefore, let us, with confidence, worship the God who calls us to our work.
Pastoral Prayer
On this Labor Day weekend, O God, we bow to thank Thee for everyone in our lives whose labor has greatly benefitted us personally: our parents, our teachers and mentors, our employers, and all those whose work has resulted in a world that is eminently more productive, more satisfying, and had produced a healthier and happier life for all of us. We thank Thee for inspiring persistence and dedication to their work in countless numbers of people, and for the progress they made for all of us. We also thank Thee for inspiring us in our own work through the years, and for leading us to find meaning in our employment, whatever its nature might be.
We pray for people who want to work, and can find no employment, for those who do not have enough work to lift them above mere subsistence, and for those who have no motivation to work at all and who thus live in a self-induced poverty of both body and spirit. We pray for people whose work has ended because what they did is no longer done in this country and is not done at all anywhere. We pray for people who have sufficient employment for what they need, but whose labor is so meaningless to them that they are driven into a dangerous lethargy where heart and mind become immobilized by routine, numbing, seemingly endless toil.
We ask Thy blessing to be with political leaders throughout the world who feel overwhelmed by events over which they have no control, and yet their constituents believe they are nevertheless responsible for them. We pray especially for the President of the United States, whom many of his fellow citizens have come to believe he has withdrawn from the glaring concerns of our time, perhaps convinced that he is no longer able to please or satisfy anyone. We also pray Thy blessing to be with leaders of religion, industry, medicine, education, and commerce, that they may provide the necessary skills to lead the world to better and more productive avenues of service. All these things we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who himself knew what it was to evoke both admiration and fierce opposition, and yet confidently forged ahead, even though at the end of his journey there loomed up a cross. Now we pray together as he taught those to pray who first put their faith in him, saying, Our Father….