Thursday Prayer 5/12/22 inspired by Acts 17:16-31

God, here in the 21^st century,

like the Athenians and all the strangers and foreigners

whom we meet online,

we are still captured with telling and hearing something new.

Whatever field we are in,

the newest, hottest, sexiest repackaging

often wins the contract and the day—

even though the truth so repackaged

is still the same truth that doesn’t change.

All the old conversations about what life means,

about who we are and who we ought to be,

are dying to be resurrected as something new and interesting.

But God, the (re-)packaging we’re using—

whether of gold or silver or stone,

whether made by craft or imagination or both,

does not contain or constrain you and your truth.

You are the source of all life and breath,                                                                   

of everything given to all mortal beings—

to us and to the animals and plants around us

and to the earth itself.

You made us all through one ancestor.

You allot the times and boundaries of our existence.

In you we live and move and have our being.

We fumble and grope after you,

grabbling to feel and touch who you are.

Although you are not fully knowable,

you are not far from us.

You call us to you.

You call us to live in you,

You assure us by Jesus’s resurrection

that we are indeed your children,

that we are your offspring.

May this good news satisfy and sustain us.

Amen.

_______________________________

Rev. Barb Hedges-Goettl is interim pastor at Makemie Memorial Presbyterian Church in Snow Hill, MD. She and her pastor/psychologist husband Len recently moved to Rehoboth Beach in preparation for his June retirement. She and her daughter, Rev. Katy Stenta, have enjoyed putting together resources for the Narrative Lectionary. She blogs at bjhlog.wordpress.com