Prayers of
the People
September 15, 1996
Gracious God:
Here we are before you, in your house.
During our stop here, each one of us would like a word with you.
The world is not going the way it would if we had the running of it.
Our place of work, our homes and families, the life in our community are not
going the way they would if we had the running of them. There is so much everywhere
that needs to be put right. It is probably just as well that we aren't running
things.
But we sometimes wonder in despair whether you are running things.
So dear God our cry for a word with you is at the same time a cry for a word
from you.
Speak to us again of your love of the world!
During this stop in your house each one of us would like to know again the
embrace of your everlasting arms around us and the whole world.
God in your mercy...Hear our prayer
Gracious God, we all have people and concerns on our hearts - we lift lives
up to you.
Reach your healing hand among us -
touch those troubled ones -
those in the dark shadow of pain -
those watching by beds of pain and disability.
Grant your peace to anxious hearts.
Grant wisdom and patience to the parenting homes among us.
And prevent us from ever leaving a single soul among us in lonely isolation.
God, hear our sighs too deep for words everywhere.
God in your mercy ...Hear our prayer
Dear God, peace-makers have been called your children, give them special
care.
Peace in our world is such a precarious thing -
and where peace is secure, it is often unjust for many.
We add our cries to the cries for peace from allover the world.
Let none of us ever flee from the burden of the hurting world but partaking
of your very own embrace of the world may each of us find
the courage to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, and
to try to increase the humanness in the world.
God in your mercy...Hear our prayer
God we pray for the church.
With our brothers and sisters in the WCC,
we pray for the Church in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama -
these dear neighbours still under the grip of outmoded colonialism,
where a once lively hope is getting harder to maintain -
Bring us together for our mutual benefit
and especially for the word their faithfulness may speak to our trivialities.
God in your mercy...Hear our prayer
Dear God:
Our word with you is a lot of asking for changes in our fate and changes in
our state.
Needs be we ask one thing more - for grateful hearts.
What a transformation that will be
when we receive your gracious gift of life with a grateful heart.
What an enormous mystery the universe is that it should produce and sustain
life.
What a wondrous blessing friends and loved ones are -
all these blessings become ours to delight in -
where we receive these with a grateful heart.
May the pulse of our hearts be your praise.
God in your mercy...Hear our prayer
Now as our Saviour has taught us...