Sunday, January 11, 2009
Offered by Alice M. Trowbridge, Associate Pastor

Eternal God, creator and sustainer of all life, we do sing our alleluias today, for you constantly bring us to new beginnings and larger possibilities. You alone can create within us an unshakable confidence in the realities that are unseen yet abiding. Help us, who see change and uncertainty around us. Help us to lean back on your promises made certain in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Prepare a way in us, O God, and enable us to see that, in the troubled places of our lives and of the world, your purpose is steadily at work through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We pray today for those in public office—in this state, in every state, in our country, and around the world. We pray that your Holy Spirit inspire courage in our leaders at every level, to pursue the path that is just and peaceful and right. Bless the government of this nation as it changes hands. In places of war, conflict, and strife, summon all people to walk as one, so that the whole world would know lasting peace.

We thank you for the promise that Christ walks the common way of every day with us; and so where we are fearful, may we feel our Lord walking beside us. When illness touches us or someone we love, may healing grace become the restorer of mind, body, and spirit. When we despair because of an abundant earth so populated with your people who are hungry, thirsty, cold, and without adequate shelter or medical care, remind us of Christ our Lord, who said that when we have helped others, we have helped him.

God at the dawn of this new year, we pray that you bind us afresh to a reliance on your promises, that in you we are accompanied, embraced, and loved and that you never let us go. And so we pray that you fix our steps that we not stumble beneath the strains of life. Remind us that there is no greatness without goodness, no vision without virtue, and that our lives are most rewarding when spent in humble service to you, that in giving, we experience the essence of your love.

We pray so to live that we not only turn to you in the trials of life, but also walk with you in the course of calmer days. Help us to believe in beginnings: to make a beginning, to be a beginning, so that we may not just grow old, but grow new each day of this amazing life you call us to live, with the passion of Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray together saying, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church