All of us have had individuals who have assisted us in our journey as Christians. Today we shall consider the patriarch Abraham, the first of the great historical figures to enter the pages of the Bible. In so doing, we shall briefly examine his influence on subsequent religious development throughout the western world. We praise God for His guidance of this great and good man. Let us, with grateful confidence in the God of Abraham, worship the God of Abraham.
Pastoral Prayer
We praise Thee, O God, for all those who have preceded us in the faith, and for giving to us their foundation upon which to build our own trust and commitment in Thee. Today we thank Thee especially for Abraham, the first of the great historical patriarchs of the Bible. We thank Thee for the astonishing submission he offered to Thee, trusting that, despite what appeared to be utter folly, he went at Thy direction to strange places under strange circumstances, hoping against hope that Thy word was true. Grant to all of us the kind of tenacious faith of Abraham, so that we too may move through all the years of our lives, searching, as he did, for Thy leading in the most unpromising of conditions.
We thank Thee that the tradition carried on by Abraham and his descedants continues to live four thousand years after he lived. Bless all the nearly four billion people of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam who look to Thee because Abraham was the first to look to Thee in devotion and consecration. Enable peace to reign among the sons and daughters of the First Patriarch, so that religion may unite the world rather than divide it, and that it shall lead the world to hope rather than to rancor and despair.
We confess before Thee our own failures by contributing to the political reverses which continue to plague us, simply because we were too concerned with the small issues of our own personal lives that we overlooked the wreckage which was occurring all around us. Grant to the world’s peoples and to the American people a deeper sense of duty to focus on big issues rather than only on small personal ones. We pray for the people of China, Russia, Turkmenistan, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Greece, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, the Philippines, and elsewhere, where autocrats are taking an ever firmer grip on power, squeezing flickers of democracy into oblivion wherever possible. Be with the people of the United States of America in the political upheavals which continue to afflict us. Thy power is so great, Lord God, and ours seems so weak and tenuous. Strengthen all of us for the tasks ahead, that justice and freedom may once again prevail throughout much of the world Thou hast created. We ask these things in the name of Jesus, whom we call the Christ. Now we pray as he taught his first disciples, saying, Our Father….