Sunday, March 13, 2011
Offered by Thomas C. Rook, Parish Associate

God of creation, God of our lives, we come before you to voice our gratitude and praise and to express our concerns, believing that you care for each one of us. We thank you that you include us in furthering your great purposes in this world—purposes of justice and kindness and love. Strengthen our resolve to live faithfully as your people. While we feel our own needs, widen our vision to include the needs of others for whom you would have us be your hands and your heart in this world.

As we begin this holy season of Lent, this journey with Christ to his passion, death, and resurrection, stir our hearts toward greater faithfulness to him and to one another. This day, O Lord, you find us within the ordinary places of our lives, within our daily joys and concerns. Some are anxious today, fearing insecurities within employment and finances, in health and quality of life. And some are feeling the grief of significant losses, and some experience eroding confidence in their dreams for the future. As Christ encountered ones years ago in their places of pain and insecurity, in those same places find us today, O Lord. Touch and heal and comfort the tender and wounded places in our life.

Within our country, within our state and city, we pray for leaders with strength of purpose and a vision that looks beyond self-interest toward the common good. Inspire them—and us—with high goals for our life together and the courage to accept today’s burdens as our own rather than timidly passing them to future generations. And within our faith community, continue to guide Fourth Presbyterian Church, its friends and members and leaders, strengthening us to be faithful in our time in this place.

Beyond our shores, in these days, we express our concern for those in Japan who have suffered sudden loss of life and property from earthquake and flood. And we are mindful of brave people of Libya and other Middle Eastern countries who yearn to fulfill their aspirations for responsible and free citizenship in their societies. May they find their way along the long and difficult arc that stretches from oppression to liberation. In the face of economic and social challenges, let us not lose heart in the pursuit of fairness and of peace but look expectantly to that day, as promised by your prophets, “when all peoples shall stream to the Lord’s house and walk in the Lord’s ways, when justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, and when every man and woman and child shall sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” Hasten that day, O Lord.

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

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church