Sunday, September 8, 2013
Offered by Joyce Shin, Associate Pastor

Lord of our lives, you know our comings and our goings. You know when we sleep and when we rise. In all this you know we do not always think of you. Yet you ask us to look for you so that we might follow you.

You ask us to look for you not only in the beauty of the earth, but also in the world’s scars. You call us to look for you not only on the highest mountaintops, but also in the lowliest of places. You reveal yourself not only in new life or at the end of life, but throughout our lives. You ask us to see you not only in what is familiar to us, but especially in what is foreign and strange to us. We are sorry, most merciful God, that we fail to look for you, to wait for you, even to hope for you.

We are preoccupied, Lord, with all that is around us, things that we consume and things that nearly consume us. Try as you might, Lord, to astound us with beauty, with the awesomeness of your world, and the connectedness of your creation, our attention is so short in span and our senses dulled.

Make us seekers of your signs, Lord, so that we do not settle in shallowness. Help us to look beyond appearances for what is significant. Teach us to hear your word for new meanings. Put us in touch with what more you would have us see, know, love, and do.

For you have promised great things for us. Though they are too profound, grand, and complex for us to behold at once, we can, little by little, come to know the promise you have made and the part we are to play.

Only then, Lord, will we know fully the cost of following you. Only then will we know what it costs to work for the world as well as for ourselves, for a peace that not only permeates our hearts and minds, but also pervades throughout all lands. Only then will we be able to hope more for the new creation that you make possible in Christ than for things to stay as they have been for our sake.

Until your promise is fulfilled, do not let us be complacent, Lord. Instead dress us for action and equip us with every virtue we need so that we might persevere and press on until the day when the world and all that is in it have become a new creation. And when we fall short, make up the distance, Lord. For the sake of your Son and the world he loved, we pray the prayer he taught us to say: Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church