Sunday, February 17, 2002
Offered by Dana Ferguson, Associate Pastor for Mission

We scan the heavens, O God, in search of your likeness, but we do not find it there. Instead, we find it on earth in Jesus Christ, not as the result of our search for you, but as the result of your search for us. We are prone to stray, but you always remain close enough to hear our cry. You endow us with gifts worthy of creatures made in your image. Yet you do not abandon us when we use them for our own purposes. Not only do you forgive us when we misuse what has been given to us, you pursue us with a love that will not let us stay away.

For the assurance that while we may be late in our repentance, it is not too late for your forgiveness, and the assurance that even though our love may let go of you, your love will never let go of us, we give you thanks.

We are tempted by the world in which we live. We live in a land rich in harvest, a culture steeped in learning, an economy famous for its technology, a political system envied for its democratic traditions. We may not be tempted to betray our God to own all the world’s food, but we have been known to put more money towards the dinner bill than to feeding the hungry. We may not be willing to betray our God to control the world’s people but we have been known to use our access to resources to protect and hoard our riches. The world you have set us in runs deeper than our wisdom and ranges wider than our understanding and yet you have put it in our hands, the hands of us who are flawed and fickle.

We see it lying there in the palm of our hands, almost wanting to give it back, to let you reshape it without giving us a say. But it is not ours to return. And so it is to you, who alone can raise up life where none has lived, that we turn.

In these days ahead, you have called us to reflection, and so we pray that you would help us be up to the task. Give us hearts stout with courage that we may not hide from the suffering of friend and foe. Give us shoulders broad with strength that we may walk with the wounded. Give us spirits quiet with humility that we may call forth new life in your name.

When this journey is done, call us forth from the wilderness, that we might reveal the source of our lives by the way we live them. Let us dedicate our harvest to the war on starvation; our learning to the war on ignorance; our technology to the war on misery; our democracy to the war on oppression. Let us intercede for these victims of injustice, if we dare. Call us forth to be with those whose souls and bodies need your soothing touch. Return them to us with your power that, through your presence, we might resurrect and restore, revive, and renew.

In all of this we pray that we may we be creators with you in life and conquerors with you in death. And we ask it in the name of the one through whom we know life, praying together as he taught the disciples saying, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church