Today and for eight subsequent Sundays, we shall be pondering the meaning of the Beatitudes of Jesus. These nine verses of scripture are some of the most glorious, inspiring, and ironic words ever spoken by Jesus. Each Beatitude is the promise of a particular kind of blessing to particular kinds of people in particular kinds of situations. Together they cover a vast range of happiness which awaits all of us, if we are open to the leading of God’s spirit. Let us worship the God who, through Jesus Christ, constantly showers His blessings upon us.
Pastoral Prayer
Gracious God, we have life solely because Thou hast created the world, and ultimately we entered into its life at the beginning of our own lives. We realize that everything we have comes to us ultimately by Thy bounty, and not because we deserve or have truly earned any of it. We thank Thee most for all the people who have graced our lives: our parents and siblings, our spouses and children and grandchildren, the many friends we have had through the years, and for all the other people, living and dead, who have influenced our lives by what they wrote or passed down to others whom they did not and could not know. We especially thank Thee for all the people of faith who have bequeathed their gifts of faith to us throughout all of human history. We thank Thee too for the multiple physical blessings we have of things both large and small which add deep meaning to our lives.
We pray this day, Lord God, for people who have far fewer material blessings than we have, and are likely never to have much more than the meager belongings now in their possession. Help them to see that their primary and perhaps their only hope is in Thee and in nothing they have, since they have so very little. Be also with the spiritually poor, whose inner life is hemmed in by poverty, disability, disease, or continuously devastating circumstances. Enable us who have so much to have a heightened concern for those who have so little.
Heavenly Father, we pray for the kinds of people who are almost never prayed for by anyone: those with personalities so twisted and distorted that their behavior causes them ultimately to become shunned by everyone they meet; for those who are so self-absorbed they cannot establish a healthy link to anyone; for those so fundamentally insecure that they try to mask their insecurity by acting superior to or wiser than or utterly indifferent to everyone around them; for those who are mentally so unstrung that they constantly pepper everyone around them with questions which haunt them daily, but who do not take time to listen for any answers which might be suggested to them. God of grace, Thy grace is sufficient for all things, and therefore we ask Thee to infuse it into people who desperately need it but who also constantly evade it. These and all our prayers we make in Jesus’ name. Now we join together in prayer as he taught us, saying, Our Father….