Sunday, September 15, 2002
Offered by John Buchanan, Pastor

Almighty God, our hearts are full as we come into your presence in our prayers this morning. We have remembered and relived this week the staggering events of a year ago. We have grieved again the assault on our nation and the loss of so many lives. We have been moved again by the extraordinary bravery of ordinary people. Even as we hoped to move on, we were drawn back in memory, in anger and fear and tears.

We thank you, dear God, for the resiliency of our nation, for its high ideals and its commitment to freedom, justice, equality. We thank you for the renewed gratitude we experienced this week and for a renewed sense of national purpose.

We thank you for our leaders: for their measured and modest words this week; for political institutions—for hearings and primary elections and judicial proceedings, expressing the heart and soul of our nation. We thank you for our churches and synagogues and mosques, where believers and seekers and doubters gathered to pray and to express together the oneness of the human race, created in your image.

And we thank you for new reminders and assurances of your love, which will never let us go and from which nothing will ever separate us.

Our hearts are full, dear God, with gratitude for ordinary blessings: the unrestrained joy of children, the steady love of friends and spouses and parents and grandparents, the warmth of the sun on our faces, fresh breezes, and life-giving rain, the beauty of art and music. O God, you have so richly blessed us in so many ways and we are so deeply grateful.

You have invited us to open our hearts to you and to bring our needs, desires, fears, hopes, and joys.

And so we pray for the world and for its peace. We pray for our leaders, for our president and his advisors, engaged in important debate and discussion. Bless them and give them clarity of sight, integrity of purpose, courage of conviction, in a way that honors your clear intent for peace on earth. We pray for the United Nations and the hope it represents. Strengthen its leaders and institutions and all who work for peace and compassion through its agencies. We pray for the men and women of our armed forces, serving throughout the world.

We pray, O God, for your church, your people throughout the world, for our brothers and sisters in churches in Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, and Pakistan, caught in the currents of geopolitics, striving to be faithful to you in situations full of danger and complexity. Bless them and remind us that we and they together constitute the very body of Christ, your Son, on earth.

We pray, merciful God, for those whose needs are urgent—those of our members and circle of friends who are sick, facing or recovering from surgery; for those who grieve the loss of a dear one, for those who are lonely, depressed, afraid; for those who quietly suffer mental illness; for those who struggle with handicaps.

And we pray for ourselves: help us be all you created us to be. Give us the grace to accept your love and forgiveness in Jesus Christ and the strength to extend that love to others and that forgiveness to those who have offended us. O God, keep us in your care and help us be faithful, joyful people. All this we pray in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church