In the storm and stress of life, we have a refuge, a place where our spirits can be revived and out hopes renewed. The Sabbath is God’s gift to His people. By it we are given time to reflect and meditate and find refreshment when the world seems too much for us. But these things happen because we become related to the One who created and sustains us, and in Him alone can the Sabbath work its wonders among us. Therefore let us, with Sabbath confidence, worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
Sometimes it is out of the depths that we cry unto Thee, O Lord, and we ask Thee to hear our voice. People in great poverty cry out from hunger and despair. People in illness or pain cry out from their uncertainty and agony. People in positions of authority find their authority eroded, and they wonder how, or if, their situations can be repaired.
People with great responsibility discover that some of their decisions proved to be incorrect, sometimes even dreadfully wrong or disastrous, and they feel cast into the depths by their own choices. However much stress or grief or pain any of us feels, it is to Thee that we turn, asking Thee to help us get through whatever it is we must face. Be Thou our strength, O God, in the midst of woefully apparent human weakness.
We ask Thee to forgive us for actions we have taken or words we have spoken which can never be retracted, and for which we feel highly ashamed. And as we ask forgiveness from Thee, we also ask Thee to help us always to forgive one another. Lord God, make of all Thy children and everyone in this congregation a community of forgiveness, where lives are healed and restored because people deliberately choose to put grievances they feel behind them.
We thank Thee for all Thy blessings toward us, blessings which we observe all around us. We praise Thee for the glory of this season, the singular beauty of our community, and for the extraordinary fullness of life that most if not all of us constantly experience. We thank Thee for all the people who have added immeasurably to the richness of our lives: parents, siblings, spouses, children, grandchildren, friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Thy goodness toward us is without limits, and for that we give Thee thanks and praise. Most of all we thank Thee for the one who has led us into a relationship with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call the Christ. Now together we pray as he taught his disciples, saying, Our Father….