Posts Tagged ‘love’

Seeing

May 16, 2021

Widen our lens O Lord, well beyond the narrow aperture of our phones.

Help us to lift our heads and see the beauty and the wonder of the world around us, and know that you are with us, that we are not alone nor in charge.

Help us to see your love and and forgiveness in the people around us, so that we too might respond with compassion and mercy.

Help us to see the many revelations of your grace that surround us, inviting us to move beyond our resentful and quarrelsome ways.

Open our eyes Lord to the possibilities of our future were we to work together.

Amen

Caring For Our Kids

May 2, 2021

Bless our children Lord.

When we were expecting, the doctor told us, “a child is God’s way of saying the world must go on.”

Help us change Lord, for their sake.

Protect them from a legacy of fear, hate, and resentment.

Instead let them know joy, peace, and opportunity.

Help them love and be loved by their fellow citizens.

Give us all hope.

Help us change Lord, that our children might more fully live.

Amen

Bearing Fruit

April 18, 2021

Galatians 5:22-26

Help us Lord bear the fruit of your Spirit,

love and joy,

free us from our hate and fear;

peace,

heal our anger and resentment;

patience, kindness, and goodness,

may we see and nurture the goodness embedded in all your children;

faithfulness,

let your command to love our neighbor as ourselves guide our way;

gentleness,

may we forgive ourselves and others as we move forward;

self-control,

may we think harder, choose our words more carefully, listen well, and act wisely.

Help us bear fruit O Lord.

Amen

Hope

March 21, 2021

Thank you Lord for vaccines and sunny days; the sounds of children playing, a casual encounter with friends, flowers pushing up through the earth, a good meal.

For all these things that give us hope.

Don’t let the gun shots, the hurt that fills our hearts, the hate that spews through our media, or the uncertainty that surrounds us, take that hope away.

Help us to focus on the many signs of your presence in our world, and reach out to others in love and compassion.

Lead us forward O Lord.

Amen

God With Us

February 21, 2021

Matthew 1:23, 7:12, 8:16-17; Is. 53:4-6; Ps. 103

We thank you Lord for coming to be with us.

For choosing to take on our infirmities, heal our diseases, comfort our sorrows, carry our burdens, forgive our transgressions, and suffer for our inequities.

Be with us still, and stay with us, despite our many lapses.

Guide us, care for us, and teach us your ways, so we might better do for one another as you have done for us.

We confess our constant need for your presence O Lord, and praise your Holy Name.

Amen

A Different Harvest

January 10, 2021

You reap what you sow. (Gal. 6:7-10)

Forgive us Lord, for planting and nurturing the seeds of hate, anger and resentment.

Forgive us for our willingness to dismiss and even mock our fellow citizens.

Forgive us for pursuing the folly and comfort of easy answers.

Forgive us for following false prophets.

Help us heal the wounds and scars on our land and among our people.

Help us to plant anew, and to pull the weeds that infect our current discourse.

Guide us to a future harvest of justice and wisdom, of love and compassion.

Amen.

Living Into The Light

January 3, 2021

As we start a new year, we share the following prayer from the encyclical All Brothers” published by Pope Francis on October 3, 2020. The encyclical provides guidance for our civic lives. The prayer is titled “An Ecumenical Christian Prayer” and appears following paragraph 287. Let us commit ourselves to caring for one another and strengthening our communities.

O God, Trinity of love,
from the profound communion of your divine life,
pour out upon us a torrent of fraternal love.
Grant us the love reflected in the actions of Jesus,
in his family of Nazareth,
and in the early Christian community.

Grant that we Christians may live the Gospel,
discovering Christ in each human being,
recognizing him crucified
in the sufferings of the abandoned
and forgotten of our world,
and risen in each brother or sister
who makes a new start.

Come, Holy Spirit, show us your beauty,
reflected in all the peoples of the earth,
so that we may discover anew
that all are important and all are necessary,
different faces of the one humanity
that God so loves. Amen.

Following The Light

December 27, 2020

Light of the world, shine in our hearts, that we might see and act with compassion.

Shine in our minds that we might love justice, and act wisely.

Dispel our fears, our anger, our resentments, our sorrows and despair.

Shine on our hands that we might reach out in love.

Shine on our feet that we might find the path of peace.

Guide us O Lord through the new year.

Amen

Guiding Light

December 20, 2020

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood. John 1:5

Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged. 2 Chronicles 20:16

Lord God of light, in your word we find hope,

In your presence we find joy,

In your guidance we find peace,

In your love we find rest.

Even in the darkest times, your light is there, if we are willing to look.

Help us to see it, embrace it, and share it. (John 1:9)

Amen

“Heroes of The Future”

December 6, 2020

You call us forward Lord,

  • to repent,
  • to forgive,
  • to rebuild.

Guide us by the light of your love

  • to a new politics,
  • to a new economy,
  • to a new way of being.

From our fears and sins release us, that we might have

  • the vision,
  • the energy,
  • the compassion,
  • the will,

to heal, to hope, to seek, and to be the “heroes of the future.”*

Amen

*From the papal encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” by Pope Francis, October 3, 2020, paragraph 202.

202. Lack of dialogue means that in these individual sectors people are concerned not for the common good, but for the benefits of power or, at best, for ways to impose their own ideas. Round tables thus become mere negotiating sessions, in which individuals attempt to seize every possible advantage, rather than cooperating in the pursuit of the common good. The heroes of the future will be those who can break with this unhealthy mindset and determine respectfully to promote truthfulness, aside from personal interest. God willing, such heroes are quietly emerging, even now, in the midst of our society.