Sunday, October 28, 2018
Offered by Joseph L. Morrow, Minister for Evangelism

God of the new creation, we hear you calling out to us today, beckoning us to join your Beloved Community.

Like Bartimaeus, with all the faith we can muster, we respond with gratitude, acknowledging you as Savior and Lord, the fount of our blessings and the world’s goodness. We praise the magnificence of creation graced by your Spirit. We sense it in the autumnal splendor of trees as they burst into hues of red, gold, and brown. We feel it as we give thanks for children arrayed in costume experiencing joy in this season. And we stand grateful for the presence of loved ones through times of trouble and prosperity. We are also thankful for this intergenerational community of faith buoyed by the courage and commitment of our Protestant forebears. Help us extend this legacy through an ever-inclusive witness welcoming people from all walks of life. In all these ways, we glimpse and appreciate your providential care for us.

But Lord, like Bartimaeus, we also seek your healing, for we know that our lives and our world are not well and that many yearn for but feel bereft of goodness. We pray especially against violence that has increasingly debased our common life. We pray for officials who were intended targets of bombings and the postal workers and law enforcement officials who moved quickly to thwart evil acts. We pray for African Americans killed in Louisville and our siblings in the Jewish faith who lost their lives yesterday in a shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Comfort and carry these, your children, through their hour of sorrow. In the power of your Spirit, we pray that this awful litany of violence might cease and be replaced by a doxology of hope and flourishing.

Free us as people and country from the hatred that blinds us and the fear that binds us. Help us confront within ourselves those prejudices and hatreds that keep your peace and freedom from those who most need it.

From the broken body politic our prayer turns to our tender and fragile families and mortal bodies. Tend to us as we tend ourselves and loved ones through illnesses of body, mind, and spirit. In all circumstances and in all people, help us to pursue beauty even when we only see brokenness. We beseech your grace with these deep desires of our hearts to offer praise and accept healing. Though we cannot see the outcome, we commit in trust these prayers to Jesus, who assures our triumph and taught us to pray: Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church