Sunday, January 18, 2009
Offered by Thomas C. Rook, Parish Associate

Great God of the universe, loving Lord of the human heart, we come now to give you our thanks and praise and, trusting in your compassion, to give voice to our concerns. We thank you for creating the marvelously complex web of life on earth, for creating our life and then bringing each of us to this time and place together. We thank you for nurturing and shaping our lives by your Spirit. And in the best way we know how, we offer you ourselves to be used for your great purposes. Expand our vision to see those for whom you would have us be your hands and your heart in this world.

We thank you, O God, that in the immensity of your creation you meet us within the everyday places of our lives, within our daily efforts to hold the pieces of life together. As Christ encountered those years ago and far away, in their work clothes and with dirty hands, in their places of pain and insecurity, so you still find us today. Thank you, merciful Lord, that you come to us as we are, not always spiritually well scrubbed, not always with holy thoughts or unmixed motives. Yet still you embrace us in your love even when we’re not all that lovely.

As Christ reached out to lift the wounded and the fallen, ones scarred by the hurts of life, so even yet, O Lord, extend your strong hand of compassion even toward us today—and toward others—who find themselves in difficult places of life, places of uncertainty in employment and health, places of torn relationships and of injustice. On this weekend when we honor the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., we give thanks for the distance that we have come as a nation toward greater fairness toward all our citizens. And yet at the same time we acknowledge the distance we need yet to go. As we look to the inauguration of our new president, we make earnest prayer for his welfare, for wisdom and courage for him and his administration and all our elected representatives confronting the massive challenges of our day. Fortify our hope, O Lord.

We stretch our imaginations and our hearts in concern for all in Chicago and throughout the world who thirst for justice today, who hunger for peace for themselves and their families, especially in war-suffering Gaza and Israel and throughout the Middle East. May our leaders, O Lord, may we, set ourselves to the tasks of peace and justice that you would fulfill for our time, looking to that day when your great intention for the earth comes to pass, a day when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore,” when “no more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.” a coming time when “they will not hurt or destroy on all your holy mountain, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

In faith and hope, we pray all these things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, now using words that he taught us, saying, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church