Call to Worship – July 5, 2015
Two hundred and thirty-nine years ago, on a steamy July day in Philadelphia, a few dozen men gathered to sign a document which declared they had become independent from the empire which had established their existence 169 years earlier. Three thousand years ago a king committed a grievous sin. Today we gather to thank God for the United States of America, and for the wisdom of the king who knew he must move beyond his sin if he was to become the monarch God wanted him to be. Let us, with confidence, worship the God of all hope-filled new beginnings.
Pastoral Prayer
Another national Independence Day has come and gone, O God, and we who are a small fraction of the people of that nation bow to thank Thee for the multitude of blessings which the United States of America has brought to us and to all the peoples of the world. We praise Thee for Thy spirit moving within great leaders in our past and present, and for the best qualities of the American people in our history and at the current time. But as we express gratitude for the best that is within us, we also ask Thee to enable us to improve factors in our nation which need improvement, so that the ideals which brought us into being in the beginning may become more realized in the unfolding of our national life today. Help us to become who we say we are, so that our claims about ourselves and the reality of who we are may more readily coincide.
We pray for all people who have constantly attempted to do Thy will, but who have fallen short, and who know they have fallen short. We pray for others who have managed to do the best they can, and yet have failed to accomplish what they intended, often through no fault of their own. Help us, O God, to keep moving forward in our lives, as hard as that may be and as often as we cannot seem to do what we want to do. Keep the misdeeds of our lives from undermining the best intentions of our lives, and enable us to sense that Thou art always with us, whatever obstacles may cross our path.
We pray for anyone for whom the current time is a time of particular crisis: for those who are seriously ill, for those who are facing death and who know there is nothing to be done to prevent it, for those who are in deep mourning because someone they greatly loved had died and they cannot seem to get beyond that sad reality, for those who have made decisions which have badly affected their lives and who cannot get beyond berating themselves for their foolishness, for those grieve who because of having severed a relationship which was dear to them and which may never be re-established again. Loving God, Thou alone art our ultimate hope for restored lives in the midst of brokenness, and to Thee we lift our prayers. We do so in the name of Jesus, the Great Physician of us all, praying that the healing he brought to so many may also come to us. Now we join together in prayer as he instructed his disciples, saying, Our Father….