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

Prayers for March 24, 2002

Passion/Palm Sunday

Invocation

Sabbath us, O God, and bring us solitude sufficient for our security. When temptations come, center us on our true ideals. 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 wilderness and its ways. 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. 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 in the wilderness, by sticking to You.

Evil abounds, so we ask that You Dear God. Keep us safe, through Your grace. Amen.

Prayer of Dedication

Use what we have given, both the bread and the stones, the generous and the reserved, for some good somewhere. And let our hearts follow our gifts, close behind, Amen.

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 coming of Lent, for time to think and to see, for time to renew our direction and our hope in You.

We give you thanks for lessons learned, children taught, elders appreciated. We give you thanks for the work of our hearts and our minds, even for what we didn't get done. We give you thanks that you give us more opportunities than we can ever use. And we pray for wisdom and discernment. Let us not be tempted to do too much _or be too much. And 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.

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