Sunday, May 6, 2001
Offered by Steven Runholt, Pastoral Resident

“Yes” is the word we want to say to you this day, O God. Yes to your call. Yes to our best selves. Yes to the redemption of the world. We know your call goes out to all humanity without end or limit, and we thank you for that. It’s your call to us, to each person here now, that we struggle with.

God, we’re stunned and grateful that you love us enough to call us. We’re stunned and grateful that you desire us and want to be in relationship with us. Your call provokes us, like friction provokes a match; it comforts us, challenges us, amazes us, and sets our lives ablaze.

Please give us ears to hear your call amidst the deafening din of city life. Give us hearts to receive it, to make yours the first voice we respond to in days filled with competing voices. Give us strength to bear your call, O God, when we come to our own Gethsemanes and would prefer that not your will but ours be done.

We give you particular thanks this day for those who have accepted the call to be officers in this church. Bless them in their service and guide them in their leadership. Blend their diverse voices together into singularity of purpose.

God, together we are the church this day and every day, and so we lift up our concerns to you now in faith and hope and love. We pray for loved ones and unloved ones, that all might be touched by your grace. And we pray for our world in its increasing need—that grace and peace and justice might prevail in Macedonia, Syria, the Philippines, the United States.

Finally we pray for ourselves, that you would give us the courage to follow our Lord Jesus, who calls us to be his disciples, who showed us that you love us like a mother, and who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church