Sunday, December 15, 2013
Offered by Joyce Shin, Associate Pastor

Almighty God, we begin this day waiting, watching, and hoping. We wait for your intervention, Lord, because we know how insufficient our own efforts are. You have a vision so complete and perfect for your world and all the peoples in it. And though we strive as best we can to do the right thing at the right time for the right cause, we know that we must attune our efforts with yours. So we wait for you, O Lord, to show us the depth, the breadth, the height of your saving love.

We thank you, almighty God, for sending your Son to us. We watch for his coming. In his birth and in his death, you have shown us how vulnerable in flesh, how naked in truth, and how great in magnitude your love for the world is. We know, O Lord, that you have entrusted us with the immense responsibility of receiving your Son into the world. Do not let us turn to look the other way. Do not let us hand Christ over, for he is our humanity. Wherever there is humanity, O Lord, we know you are there. So we pray today for every home, for every school, for every household of faith, for every agency, every government, every place on earth where your people dwell. Let there be such humanity that your people give credit to your divinity. In every humane act of kindness, every gesture of compassion, in every word spoken on behalf of another, in every labor of love, we know that you are there. So let us watch for these acts. Let us live for them.

Let us also put our hope in them. Too often, Lord, we accept for reality situations in which you are not yet finished. We are too quick to accept relationships as broken, roads as leading to dead ends, efforts as wasted. Remind us, Lord, that hope is never a useless gift, that no situation is hopeless. So form us into a people who hope. We hope, almighty God, for the healing of all who grieve in Newtown, Connecticut, here, and anywhere. We hope for peoples’ freedom to be able to flourish in North Korea, Syria, and Afghanistan. We hope for nothing less than a new heaven and a new earth to be recreated by the love you have for us in Jesus Christ.

In his name and for his sake we pray the prayer he taught us to say:  
Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church