“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 165 years later because we are bombarded by so many conflicting opinions on what is claimed to be television news coverage. 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.
An itinerant dreamer speaks to us by the shores of a beautiful lake, or in a Galilean village, or on the streets of Yerushalayim. His words are unlike any we ever heard before, his thoughts of God and His kingdom sound like nothing we have ever known. Does he penetrate our defensive, wary minds, or do we choose to ignore what he says? He seems neither distressed by our unease, nor angry at our reluctance. He persists; shall we listen? Let us, with renewed concentration, 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. We also pray for military personnel who have been ordered into situations where their very presence creates animosity and distrust. 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.
We are moved to thank Thee that in another hurricane season we and nearly everyone else on the Atlantic coast have been spared serious devastation. We confess that we do not fully understand why the weather does what it does, but we thank Thee for Thy presence with everyone everywhere when the storms of life assail us. Grant us discernment as we attempt to understand how or why natural disasters inevitably jostle the world on its foundation. 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…. We gather together on this Lord’s Day to thank Thee, O God, for all Thy countless blessings toward us. We confess that we do not deserve everything we have, and that it was not by our own efforts that we have it all. But we praise Thee for the abundance of our lives nonetheless, knowing that all good comes from Thee. We thank Thee for the innumerable people, past and present, who have added to our foundation of faith, some of whom are known to all of us and others of whom are known only to each of us. Most of all, we thank Thee for the singular ministry of Thy unique son Jesus of Nazareth, whose life and teachings have been the primary doorway through which we have been welcomed into Thy presence.
We ask Thee, O God, to help us to reflect more deeply and honestly on the challenges of faith which Jesus has presented to all of us. In the kind of world and nation and community which has evolved around us, it becomes easy for us to give lip service to what Jesus said, but to ignore much of it in our everyday lives. Enable us more fully to perceive the terrible, wonderful edginess in words Jesus spoke so long ago, words which should have as much relevance today as they had then, but which we can so deftly deflect in what passes as contemporary life. Forgive us for dismissing Jesus’ teachings without having pondered them sufficiently seriously.
As we pray for a deeper Christian life for ourselves, we also pray for everyone for whom life has become an immense burden: the broken of heart, the depressed of spirit and mind, victims of repression and institutionalized hatred, and those who live in fear because of the return of the pandemic. We pray for all for whom faith has become either an intellectual impossibility or an insurmountable spiritual challenge. We remember those who recently have lost a loved one to death, and who now enter into a situation they have long known would come, but who also have feared its coming. Lighten our load, O God, when the way is hard and the future is inevitably cloudy. All these things we ask in Jesus’ name, who, because he was so fully in Thee, also so fully understood everything we are forced to face. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.