We gather in worship today to give thanks to God for the lives of two famous and vastly influential men, one from the Bible and one from the pantheon of great American Presidents. Thinking about these two giants in the history of the human race, we are struck by how God blesses us from time to time through the extraordinary gifts and insights of individual human beings. Therefore, with gratitude for His continuing grace shown to us through the wisdom of unique and special people, let us worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
O Thou who hast created the world and universe, and all that is in them, we marvel at Thy creative purposes. Thou hast taken what to us is an immense amount of time to inaugurate and to observe the evolution of Thy creation, but to Thee it is like no time at all, since time is not time to Thee. We praise Thee for Thy patience, as Thou dost wait to see how both nature and sentient beings affect the progression of creation. We thank Thee for Thy love in allowing us the freedom to do what we hope is best for accomplishing our resonsibilities in the stewardship of the created order. We ask Thy forgiveness for whatever ways we may have thwarted Thy will by decisions we have made which damage Thy creative purposes. Lord God, help us to be as worthy servants for Thee as is humanly possible, so that we may always seek the best for this small sphere in the vast expanse of other created spheres in Thine ever-expanding universe.
We thank Thee on this day for two men, Moses and Abraham Lincoln, who had a major impact on the lives of their own people in their own time and also on our lives in our time. Because of Thy presence in each of them, they had remarkable patience to live though an almost endless series of crises which threatened to obliterate both them and the people they served. Nonetheless they continued to move forward, undaunted by the many obstacles in their way. We thank Thee for their insistence on perceiving their ultimate goal, especially when their people were willing to forsake it and to give up the struggle.
Loving God, in the struggles we face, we ask Thee to bless us as Thou didst bless these two great men of our common history. Uphold those who feel they are being crushed by circumstances over which they have no control, those who believe they have lost their way in life, those who feel smashed in spirit because of major difficulties they have encountered and they see no way out of their troubles. Grant health to the sick, joy to the sorrowful, and help to the hopeless. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, remembering how he too was faced with severe challenges, and yet remained steadfast to the end. Now we pray together as Jesus taught his first followers, saying, Our Father….