Each day of our lives, but especially in all the days in which we worship, we need to be open to the call of God, beckoning us to do what we alone can do to consolidate His kingdom in His world. There is no one incapable of performing service to God, and no one capable of doing everything God needs to be done. Therefore let us today listen for the voice of God moving in our hearts. Let us, with confidence, worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
We who are not always good give Thee thanks, O God, for Thine unfailing goodness and righteousness. We who do not always act faithfully thank Thee for Thy faithfulness toward us in all things. We who are not constant in our love for one another or for Thee thank Thee that Thy love for us never ebbs, and that it sustains us in all the vicissitudes of life. Because we are limited and incapable of moral or ethical perfection, we are all the more grateful to Thee in whom alone we can count on the epitome of perfection. Help us to live well with our limitations, and to be forever thankful to Thee for Thine unlimited grace and goodness.
We pray for people whose lives are currently so scrambled by illness or poverty or warfare that they think of Thee little, if ever. Uphold those who ignore Thee by Thy love which never ignores them. Be the redeemer and sustainer to those who do not perceive Thee to be their creator, even if they never shall see Thee as the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of everyone who ever lived. Lord God, it is so hard for some of Thy children to believe in Thy purposes for their lives, even when Thou art working through those lives to effect Thy purposes in Thy world. Prevent those of us who have faith from lording it over those who do not, and help us to understand that all of us are seeking in our own way to reflect Thy grace in our lives, although we may be utterly unaware of that reality.
Whether or not we are happy about it, we find ourselves in the beginning stages of what shall again prove to be a long and often bitter political confrontation leading up to an election still a very long way off. Be with our nation and all its people, with our legislators in Congress, our judges, and our President as together all of us attempt to bring to fruition what our forebears curiously described as a more perfect union. May the vocation of politics work far more to the advantage of the body politic than to that of the politicians, and may the politicians increasingly perceives them to be the servants rather than the masters of the body politic. Our prayers we make in the name of Jesus, who himself faced his own political tests in a time as tense and uncertain as our own time. Now we pray as Jesus taught his disciples, saying, Our Father….