Prayers for Sunday July 1, 2001
13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
4th after Pentecost, Proper 8

Call to Worship (Based on Psalm 77)
Leader: We cry aloud to God.
People: In the day of our troubles we seek the Lord.
Leader: To comfort ourselves we will call to mind the deeds of the Lord, and remember the wonders of old.
People: We will meditate on all Your works, and muse on Your wonders and mighty deeds, O Eternal God.

Prayer of Confession
Lord, it is hard to be with You. We sometimes forget to stand up and be Christians. It is easy to forget to be followers of the Christ. We find it easier to follow our self-imposed set of tasks that can be self-serving. O Lord, help us follow your plans for us, instead of our own. Help us to realize that even though Your “to do list” loods too hard, what you do for us makes it seem insignificant. We confess our limited imagination and call on you to increase our ability to see beyond each moment and our own petty lists and needs. Amen.

Prayer of Dedication
O Lord, you do ask a lot of each of us, and you keep on asking. May these gifts represent a portion of what we can do. Let these gifts represent in some small way our appreciation for the many gifts you have showered on us now and those we know will come in the future.

Pastoral Prayer
We know that we play at our faith that we only pretend to be faithful most of the time. We keep trying to take the easiest road possible and close our ears to fact that You, Jesus and only You should come first in our lives. So we come asking that you help us to stop dodging and start concentrating on our relationship with You. O Lord, make it the center of our lives.
O Lord, in a world that is unsure, in a world full of trends and fashions, please bring us some bed rock, some sureness, some sense of being part of something that will never change. We thank you for the certitude you add to our lives, the starting place from which we can always travel.
O Lord, in a world where news seems to always mean bad news, in a world where any news has to be balanced with positive and negative,let the fact that You have completely good news for us enter into our lives. We thank You for the one place we know things will always be good and right, Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.