2nd Quarter - Year A- Issue of WorshipAid
March, April and May (2002)

Prayers for March 17, 2002

5th Sunday of Lent

Prayer of Invocation

Sabbath us, O God, and bring us solitude sufficient for our security. When we feel as dead as Lazarus, wake us up. Restore life to us and renew us. And clarify our thoughts and our feelings: let us make sense to us again. Amen.

Prayer of Confession

We don't know as much as Your Son, O God, about life and death, sleeping and waking, vitality and quiet. But we do know what it means to be lost and confused. We know how to wander. Some of our days have been distinctly unfocused. We have wandered from place to place and not even known we are there. We go from room to room wondering what it is we are looking for. We keep loosing things and getting lost. Why did we set out on this domestic journey in the first place? Restore us this day and let us return to a sense of clarity. Tempt us with joy, not selfishness. Tempt us with faith, not fear. Tempt us with less, not more. Let our days find a focus and a center that reminds us of You, the way Jesus found His way to life, in the midst of death, by sticking to You.

Strange appearances abound. What seems dead may truly live. What seems impossible may be possible. We celebrate life in death and possible in impossible because of You Dear God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Prayer of Dedication

Use what we have given, both the generous and the reserved, for some good somewhere and at sometime. Let our hearts follow our gifts, not from far away, but close behind.

Pastoral Prayer

We give you thanks, O God, not as we ought but as we are able. For lengthening days and light returning, for the change of liturgical season and the time of Lent, for time to think and to see, for minds, even for what we didn't get done. We give you thanks that you give us more opportunities than we can ever use.

We pray for wisdom and discernment. Let us not be tempted to do too much _or be too much. And also let us not be tempted to be too trivial, too small, and too tight with our personal boundaries. Move us. Shake us up, even if just a little. Wake us from the slumbers of boredom and lack of curiosity.

And let our days be so good and so centered on You that we are of use to someone else besides ourselves.

In the name of Jesus who conquered death for each of us. Amen.