Sunday, October 21, 2018
Offered by Jeffrey Doane, Parish Associate for Older Adults

Wondrous Creator, we give you heartfelt thanks and praise for all the gifts you grant us each day of our lives. We are grateful for the loving support of friends and family, as well as the care and the prayers of this household of faith. We thank you for the strangers who touch our lives as well, bearing your grace in their own ways. We join the psalmist in exclaiming, “How manifold are your works!” For the rhythm of the seasons, we are grateful. For the air that sustains us and the waters that lap the shoreline nearby, we thank you.

You have called us to be caretakers of your creation, O God. Lead us by your Spirit to persist in crucial ecological efforts. Grant us the long view of the needs of your planet that we share, and empower our actions on behalf of coming generations of your people.

When the furious forces of nature afflict your people, O God, we pray for your comfort, companionship, and new beginnings. This morning we lift up residents of the Florida Panhandle as they seek to rebuild their lives. We remember those in Texas, France, and elsewhere who have been overwhelmed by flood waters. Sustain needed disaster relief, we pray.

Today we renew our prayers for all who suffer from gun violence, whether in Crimea or right here in Chicago. Further vital efforts to diminish harm and the loss of life, O God. May your Spirit lead us to a day when guns do not shorten lives and shadow entire neighborhoods.          

As we turn to you in prayer, God of compassion, we confess that we do so as a people and a church who are but clay jars. We are earthen and fragile. We yearn for your healing with all those for whom illness defines each day. Comfort those who grieve. Firm up the cracked places that threaten to give way.

And open us, loving God, to your grace, that we might hold its treasure and then pour it out in your service. All this we pray through Jesus, our brother and our Savior, who taught us to pray together, Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church