Sunday, October 21, 2001
Offered by Steven Runholt, Pastoral Resident

Take our lives, O God, and let them be consecrated unto thee. Take our moments and our days, let them flow in ceaseless praise; let them flow in deep, ancient rhythms of service and worship, rhythms born in heaven and in Galilee. Let us live them out, those rhythms, here and now in this city, in this country, in this time.

Take our hands, Lord, and let them move at the impulse of thy love. Let them find hammers and nails and places to use them to build your kingdom. In Honduras, in Cabrini, in local parks and schools and backyards, hammering until your love leaves its mark on us in blisters and calluses.

Take our feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee. Let them be uninhibited, fearless feet, as quick to dance as they are to walk alongside in love and support. And when they grow tired and dirty and sore, give us grace to wash one another’s feet with the living water of kindness and hospitality.

Take our intellects and use their power as you would choose. Give us and our leaders discerning minds in these dark and worrisome times. Help us and our leaders think critically and compassionately as we ponder how to realize justice in the world and how it differs from vengeance.

Take our silver and our gold, not a mite would we withhold. Guide our hands, O God, into our own deep pockets and help us grab there love minted in silver coins; and let us share those coins like manna with people who have no money, no food, no home. In this stewardship season, help each one of us to take delight in supporting this church, which shines so brightly in the heart of this amazing city.

Take our hearts, O God, for they are thine own. Comfort them; strengthen them; break them like bread, break them like loaves and fishes that our love might be multiplied and so feed a world starving for love, a world starving for food that cannot be bought but can only be given and received.

Take our very world into your hands this day, O God, your nail-scarred hands—strong and gentle and infinite. We need you to hold us, all of us, from here to Afghanistan. And please hear us now as, believing, we pray the prayer Jesus taught us, saying, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church