Sunday, January 22, 2017
Offered by Jeffrey Doane, Parish Associate for Older Adults

God of justice and compassion, we give you thanks and praise this day for all the common graces that enrich our lives: For continuing contacts with family and friends that sustain us. For this community of faith, which supports and inspires us. For the freedoms that allow us to be your diverse people, listening, speaking, and living out our convictions. For all this we are deeply grateful.

On this inaugural weekend, O God, we find ourselves in very different places as your American people. Some of us are celebrating. Some of us are protesting. Some of us are uncertain and fearful. Ground all of us, we pray, in our ultimate trust in you, Almighty God. May the leading of your Spirit direct the words and decisions of our new president, his advisors, and the congress, seeking the common good for all your people who call this country home. Strengthen the commitment of each of us to listen, especially to those with whom we disagree.

The needs of our most vulnerable neighbors are on our minds this morning, O Holy One. We lift up refugees and immigrants the world over, in Syria and surrounding nations, in northern Africa, in Europe, and here in the United States. May they know your accompanying presence. Sustain the support they so desperately need and the welcome and new beginnings for which they yearn.

We pray for those who struggle with winter storms. Grant human care and your companionship, O God. Hear us as we seek your compassion with those who are close to us, for friends and family members who are ill and those facing surgery. May your healing presence be at work through skilled professionals and in your own ways, we pray. Uphold all who persevere as caregivers, O God.

Renew our response as followers of the Lord of life. Remind all of us that our differing branches of Christianity are nurtured by one life-giving source, Jesus, our brother and our Savior, who taught his followers to pray saying, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church