Everyone has a story. We all came from a particular lineage, and a particular place, with particular parents and families and values. All of us bring our individual backgrounds into the world and nation and community. The God who made us individually unique also made us part of the one human community. As different and disparate and disunited as we may be, we who are here today gather as one people to give praise to our one God. Therefore let us, with confidence, worship the God who makes us one.
Pastoral Prayer
Gracious and loving God, we bow before Thee, marveling at the level of Thy kindness and the depth of Thy forgiveness. Thou knowest each of us completely, and from Thee no secrets can be hidden. Therefore Thou knowest all the bad deeds and thoughts we have had, and how skewed our thinking often is. Help us to understand ourselves far better than we do, and to take ourselves to task for our shortcomings much more readily than we are prone to pat ourselves on the back when we think we have done well. Teach us how to inspect our own hearts very closely, and to give far greater latitude to the hearts of other people. Help us to become more like Thee, O God, for we realize that being like ourselves makes us far short of what we should be.
We pray for people who are in very serious straits and do not know it, for those who know their lives are at great risk and do not know how to deal with it, for those who feel crushed by circumstances over which they have no control and may never escape that situation, and for people whose lives are as close to human bliss as possible and yet never think to express thanks to Thee for their pleasant existence. We pray for those who momentarily are confronted by major hardship, crying out to Thee for assistance. Be Thou their aid. We remember the ill or dispirited or morose, who long for respite, but it does not seem to come. Be Thou their strength. We pray for those confronted by large changes in their lives, and they face the future not with hope, but with fear. Be Thou their guide.
We pray for our politically polarized nation, and for all our political leaders who try to bring unity to a very divided populace. Bless those who seek to bring healing to warring factions. Grant wisdom to those who heretofore have refused even to consider why people of other political views think and act as they do. Disrupt the stubborn attitudes and obdurate actions of those who are inflexible, either knowing it and being proud of it, or who have deluded themselves into imagining that they are open-minded, loving citizens of an open-minded, loving nation. These prayers we make in the name of Jesus, whom we hail as Prince of Peace. Now we pray together as he taught his disciples, saying, Our Father….