Sunday, September 14, 2008
Offered by Alice M. Trowbridge, Associate Pastor

God of the one human family, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, how we praise your holy name. We are grateful this day for waking into another dawn, another beginning, another opportunity to be your faithful people, to serve and honor you in word and deed.

You have called us each by name, and we belong to you. We rejoice with these newly baptized this day, and we remember our own baptism and that yours is a love that will never let us go. You have entrusted to us the gift of our lives, that even when we falter from your ways, you believe in us still.

We pray this day for those reeling and recovering from hurricane and flood; we pray this day for those in harm’s way—where wars rage on, where disease runs rampant, where your people live in isolation or fear. Guide us, we pray. Guide your church throughout the world to be an agent of justice and reconciliation, of compassion and peace. Show us in our private lives the ways we can make changes to love and serve your world in need.

For in Christ, your word became flesh and dwelt among us. In his name you call us to act: to seek you and to find you in the face of friend and stranger. And there are times when Christ calls us to take perilous journeys, to venture into uncharted terrain in response to your will. We pray for your presence to sustain us and your guidance that we not lose heart. Remind us of the arena of your work—that you stand with us in our brokenness and our fears, and by your love and grace, you grant us freedom. Keep us from taking your freedom for granted, as though we have license to boast. Instead, let freedom release us to serve you with fervor, to show others that boldness that Christ taught on the cross.

In this world of privilege and poverty, keep us on your path, where your light shines upon us all and where you value us not by what we have, but by how generously we give of ourselves to the building up of your kingdom. May we invest wisely, mindful of all that you have entrusted to our care and following in the shining example of our Lord, who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life for us. It is in his name that we pray together, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church