Call to Worship – September 13, 2020

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.”  So wrote the American poet James Russell Lowell at the time of the Mexican War.  The decision of voters is made much more difficult now because we are bombarded by so many contradictory opinions coming from the candidates. We need both the guidance of God and personal discipline as we struggle to determine what truly is happening around us.  Therefore, looking to God for wisdom, let us with confidence worship God.

 

Pastoral Prayer

 

            O Thou who art the Creator of all people and all peoples, we thank Thee for the multiplicity of Thy creative purposes which have resulted in many nations and nationalities.  But in that profound diversity we acknowledge there are also problems, for some people imagine everyone should be exact copies of who they are.  And when it obviously is not so, suspicion and rancor may arise.  Be with all Thy children as we seek to live together in a rapidly shrinking planet, where increased mobility brings foreign influences into almost every nation on earth, and especially into our own nation.  Help us to live more comfortably and equitably with one another, even when we realize we shall never largely agree with one another.

 

            We pray for the people who are placed at the ragged edges of the world where cultures and religions clash: aid workers, linguists, medical personnel, government operatives, volunteers, religious emissaries, teachers.  Help them in the difficult work they do of trying to assist people in conflict to become people of concord. Lord God, we painfully realize that sometimes and in some places it is not easy to be alive, but we pray Thy blessing upon those who seek to bring relative order out of apparent chaos.

 

            In another hurricane season, we who have thus far been spared pray for those who have not been so fortunate. Uphold those who are struggling to cobble their lives back together in Louisiana. As we anxiously watch the weather, grant us discernment as we attempt to understand how or why natural disasters inevitably jostle the world to its foundations.  Help us also to be little Christs to those around us who have felt their own personal storms and who need our comfort and support.  These and all our prayers we make in the name Jesus, whom we have been led to believe is Thy Christ.  Now we pray together as long ago he taught his disciples, saying, Our Father….