2nd
Quarter 2002
Call to Worship (Based on Psalm 116)
Leader: We love the Lord because God has heard our voices and our supplications.
People: Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.
Leader: What shall we return to the Lord for all God's bounty to us?
People: We will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.
Prayer of Confession
Loving God, you have dealt with us graciously, but too often we respond with ingratitude. We accept too readily the myth that we are self-made people, that our possessions and status in life are the sole result of our own efforts. Forgive us for our spiritual blindness. Open our eyes to your presence in every aspect of our lives. Renew us by your Spirit, that we might serve as a witness to others of your love and grace, for we ask it in the name of the One who incarnates that love and grace, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen
Prayer of Dedication (Based on Psalm 116)
Leader: What shall we render to the Lord for all God's bounty to us?
People: We will offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. We will pay our vows to the One who redeems us in the presence of all the people.
Pastoral Prayer
Gracious God, our Creator, we often come to you with our many questions, and thus miss those that are addressed to us. Were the Christ of the Emmaus Road to come to us, we would have to confess that we seldom think or speak of him once we pass through the doors of your house of prayer. Our conversations deal with bills and payments, stoplights and traffic, diets and TV shows, office politics and gossip of infidelities, leisure pursuits and bodily aches and pains.
Help us, through more faithful attendance to our prayers and Scripture reading, to dwell more on the One who has redeemed us from sin and death, so that our faith spills over from Sunday to the other days of the week. Equip us to see meaning in our aches and pains, indeed to be willing to step into those areas of conflict and need where we can be of help, thereby shouldering our own forms of the cross. We pray not just for ourselves, but for all those whom you have created. Help us see them as potential brothers and sisters in Christ, and not as competitors whom we are to win against at any price. May you bring hope to those oppressed by poverty or human-produced tyranny.
Drive out the prejudices and hatreds which produce so much violence. Stem the greed that drives us to recklessly consume and waste far more than our share of your creation, while neglecting the needs of others, Uphold the hand of our President (Prime Minister etc.) , and all who govern in our name, that they may follow in the ways of your justice and righteousness. May Christ, and his way of the cross, become the model for our living, so that those who do not yet know you may see in us the image of your Son, we pray for this in God's holy name, Amen.
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