Sunday Prayer

In prayer we draw close to you, O God,
like an infant clinging to its mother’s breast,
like a child holding tight to a teacher’s hand.

In prayer we dare to make a spectacle of ourselves,
pouring out our fears and doubts and heartaches,
laying bare our longing for grace and wisdom.

We locate our despair in your compassion.

We locate our tears in your grace.

We locate our hope in your love.

Protect your people, O God, your beloved children:
all those who are mourning, all those who are fleeing,
all those who are injured or uncertain or alone.

Protect your people, O God, our brothers and our sisters:
in Baghdad and Beirut, in Oklahoma City and Chicago,
in Paris and Calais, from Missouri to Seoul.

Do not fail to bring comfort.

Do not fail to be near.

Do not fail to raise your lament with ours.

Ah, dear God, we wish that we were blameless in the world’s chaos;
we wish that we could come before you without grief and fear and sin.
Instead we come to you humble and holding on for love … for life.

We have no good apart from you, no good apart from one another.
So do not give us up, we pray, but evoke imagination and compassion
within our hearts and within our living, for the sake of your healing.

These things we pray in the power of Jesus’ name. Amen.

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