Sunday, February 20, 2011
Offered by Joyce Shin, Associate Pastor

Everywhere we look, O Lord, we see a world in need of you. We feel its imbalance and its pressure. There are peoples rising up for freedoms and fairness, and there are peoples lying low in fear and powerlessness. Whether they are loud or silent, you hear the beating of their hearts; you know the causes for which they care, and you can name the people whom they love. Everywhere and to everyone, let your law be known, O Lord. Let it be heard over the discontent in our streets and the riots in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. Let it be felt as the pulse in every person. Let your law be read in nature, on stone tablets, and on the tablet of every heart.

For we are not only hardheaded, but also hardened of heart. Pride has puffed us up. Defensiveness makes us either close up or strike out. We think the world is against us or that it should be for us. We live as though your law never existed, as though we are left to our own best devices.

How much more you want for us than that which we can achieve on our own. Blessedness of life is written into your law, O Lord. Help us to know your law—to learn it and to delight in it. Help us to learn it not only in the form of commandments, but also in the form of Jesus Christ, so that we might know your law not only in dos and don’ts, but wherever your holy love is manifest. Wherever burdens are borne for others, wherever people labor for one another and walk an extra mile for another, wherever enemies are forgiven and loved, wherever generosity goes beyond equity, and grace overwhelms even justice, there we find the law of your love.

May all in this world have certainty in the law of your love. More than the laws of physics, your law of love is what makes the world go around. It is what we can count on; it is more real and powerful than the chaos in our lives, community, and world. It is worthy of our hope in the midst of disappointments and despair.

We are, all of us, called to be your children, Lord. So throughout our lives, day by day, in what we do and say, shape us into a closer image of you. Let us be imitators of your Son Jesus Christ, whose seal has been set upon us in baptism. It is in his name that we offer this prayer and the prayer he has taught us to say:

Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church