September 1, 2011

Give us hope, God.

We see these disasters all around us,

We feel lost.

We do not know what we can rely on.

We do not know who or how to trust.

Give us hope, God,

Hope in our future,

Hope in our relationship with you,

Hope in our ability to reach you

And commune with you.

Hope in your love for us

And hope in your desire to spend eternity with us.

Give us hope, God.

Amen.

August 31, 2011

Lord, there is much I do not understand.

At the top of the list is suffering.

Why is there so much needless pain?

Why is there cancer?

Why is there hatred and disease?

Why would you create a place where these exist?

I am not one to simply say that you cause suffering for your reasons.

I am not one to say, when a young person is killed, “God knows best.”

Yet, within this mystery, I still trust these things to you,

Knowing you must be so infinitely more wise

That I can only hope,

Through study and prayer,

To come to know you better.

Then maybe I can understand your world better.

Lord, please help,

Because sometimes it seems to be more than I can bear.

Amen.

August 30, 2011

O God, you are like the sun.

You shine on each of us,

Regardless of our merit.

You bring warmth,

You give light,

You are like the sun, yet much more infinitely

Chase away the darkness.

May you inspire us to shine your light

That others may see you in us.

Amen.

August 29, 2011

Speak again to us.

Use silences,

Use signs,

Use booming voices,

Use burning bushes,

Use rainbows,

Use lightning,

Use brightness,

Use the dark,

All things are within your capacity, O God.

Please use them all,

That your creation,

Who so often forgets that we are your creation,

Will know you intimately,

And will trust you completely.

Amen.

August 28, 2011

Please use me, O God.

Send me where you want me to go.

I am ready for new things,

I am ready for new experiences,

I am ready to touch new lives.

I pray, O God, that even if I stay right here where I am,

No moving,

No grandiose changes in my location or

My day to day activities…

I pray that even then I can find new ways to reach people,

That I can help others know about you,

And I can help others to see the goodness present in other humans…

Something that can be lost too easily.

So, please use me, O God!

August 27, 2011

God, I pray for forgiveness this day.

I know that I have failed to be the best person I could be.

I have failed in ways that are huge,

And I have failed in ways that are small.

I have lost sight of you,

And I have lost faith in others.

Lord, please forgive me.

Help me to forgive myself,

And help me to do better tomorrow.

Amen.

August 26, 2011

How can we understand how you love us?

Will we ever be able to accept and not doubt that love?

What does it take for us to know we are loved, by you, or by each other?

Lord, grant us the ability to trust in love.

There are very few other things worth trusting in,

But grant that we may trust in the goodness of love,

And help us to give love so freely

That others may trust in its goodness, too.

Amen.

August 25, 2011

God of all things,

We praise you for your creative powers.

We praise you for the way that you have loved this world,

And we praise you for the vast worlds you have created.

Thank you for making us a part of your creation,

And for loving us.

You are beyond all measure.

Amen.

August 24, 2011

Lord, God, help us to know how to teach others about you.

We cannot change the hearts of others,

Only you can,

But, God, please help us to learn how to

Create the conditions in which you can make those changes

In others.

And never let us forget that we need to continue to let you change us

Continually.

Amen.

August 23, 2011

Be the ground of our being, O God.

Be the ground of all our decisions,

All our steps,

All our waking and our sleeping,

And all our activity.

Help us to follow you

Wherever you lead,

And know that our steps will always be steady

Because you are the ground on which we walk.

Amen.

August 22, 2011

Open our hearts, O God,

Break them if you must,

So that we can feel the pain of others,

So that we can recognize their needs,

And so we can help to heal their wounds.

Help us to know how best to give hope to others,

And be our strength when we are afraid to try.

Amen.

August 21, 2011

Lord, help me to feel the right longings,

Help me to ask the right questions,

Help me to look in the right places for the answers,

Help me to judge myself well, but not too harshly,

Help me to find the things that you have in store for me,

Help me to receive your gifts, good or otherwise, with open arms,

And help me through all this to be more like you.

Amen.

August 20, 2011

What will it take, God, for us to regard each other with love?

Will it take punishment from you?

Will it take discipline?

Will it take edicts?

Laws?

Strife?

Violence?

There is only one thing that can turn our hearts to love for one another,

And it is more powerful than all these combined.

Please, Lord God, send your Holy Spirit into the hearts of your people

That we may learn to love with your love.

Amen.

August 19, 2011

Lord God,

Humans are so ego-centric.

We think of ourselves as the crowning glory of your creation.

We think of ourselves as just lower than you,

Just lower than your heavenly beings.

We often, perhaps always think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

We have reason,

Therefore, we think we can match wits and logic with you.

We have power,

Therefore, we imagine ourselves as only slightly less powerful than you

And gaining on you daily.

Help us to end our folly.

Help up to see ourselves

From your perspective,

So that we can see not how low we are,

But how great you are.

Amen.

August 18, 2011

God,

Please hear this simple prayer.

Talk to me,

And help me to listen.

Amen.

August 17, 2011

Lord, show us how to serve.

We are so quick to serve ourselves,

And to get such things as can make ourselves happy and wealthy.

But we often are so focused on us

That we have little capacity for your call on us to serve others.

Reinstate our call, Lord,

And give us not only the ability,

But the initiative

To follow it.

Amen.

August 16, 2011

What a God of awe,

What an incredible Lord.

You not only created us,

You allowed us to do whatever we chose,

Even though it meant death to us,

Your beloved.

And then you made a way for us to be atoned to you.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

Amen.

August 15, 2011

We picture you in many ways, O God.

And every way that we picture you

Is one more limit to exactly what you are.

Any way we think of you,

Any way we define you,

Whatever we do,

There is no way we can know all of who you are.

Help us to keep from limiting our view of you,

So that when you do appear,

In whatever way,

We will recognize you.

Amen.

August 14, 2011

Show us ourselves, O God.

Be a true mirror to our souls.

Help us to see our own flaws as clearly as we see others’

And, Lord, please,

Help us to cleanse ourselves

So that we can be servants of yours.

Amen.

August 13, 2011

What must you be like, O God?

Would we even recognize your voice if you spoke to us?

Would we lose you through the noise?

Would we think that your voice is just one more

Calling us to more responsibility,

More time commitments,

More stress,

More overwork and overwhelming.

Lord, let us hear you.

Stand out in the crowd of voices.

Teach us to know your voice,

And teach us so well that eventually,

The noise will fall away,

And we will only,

Truly,

Hear you.

Amen.

August 12, 2011

Lord, this day, I thank you for love.

I thank you for the ways we interact with love,

And I thank you that your love permeates this universe.

I pray, not only in thanksgiving for your love,

And the love shared by humans,

But I pray that we would recognize your love in new and unexpected ways

Each and every day of our lives.

Amen.

August 11, 2011

When words cannot explain what we need,

When crying out to you somehow seems to fall short,

When our fears, sorrows, desires are too deep for words,

O God, hear our very spirits calling to you.

When music fails,

When our voices are muted,

When our feelings are dulled,

When our entire being cannot produce anything we recognize as coherent,

O God, hear our very spirits calling to you.

Teach us to know you,

So that we may not fear that our inner cries are unheard or misunderstood.

I pray that this is not too much to ask.

Amen.

August 10, 2011

Lord, fill us with your Spirit.

Let the Spirit affect us in ways that we cannot understand.

Let it move us to tears when we have no reason to cry.

Let it move us to laughter when we feel we have nothing left to rejoice about.

Let it show us pictures of you

And move us to see each other as representatives of you.

Let it cause us to feel when we have tried to shut off our feelings from the outside world.

And, O God, when the Spirit moves,

Let us recognize that what it is that causes us to think,

Feel,

Love,

Cry,

Laugh,

Let us recognize that it is your Spirit in us causing all these things.

Amen.

August 9, 2011

Great God,

Help us to grow.

Grow in our connection,

grow in our devotion,

grow in our love,

grow in our ability to show you and your love to others.

Remind us of our fearful and wonderful creation

in your image,

and teach us to shine you in all things.

Amen.

August 8, 2011

It is hard to contemplate the vastness of all you have created.

Simply realizing the size of the planet on which we live can seem overwhelming,

And at the same time, when we think of the distances between our planet

And the sun or other planets around,

It is even more amazing.

Once we add the vastness of a galaxy,

Or the vastness of all of the universe,

Or the possibility that there are other entire universes…

How can we ever fathom the complexities of all that you have created?

How can we imagine the sight that you must have to see it all?

All we can do is thank you for the blessing of knowing that

Through all of it,

We have a direct connection,

Each of us,

To you…

Creator of all things.

Thanks be to you.

Amen.

August 7, 2011

Freedom is what we all want, O God.

We want freedom from the stresses that bring us down each day.

We want freedom from financial responsibility.

We want freedom from others, and sometimes we even want freedom from ourselves.

Scripture teaches that our greatest freedom is ironically found in giving ourselves in service to you.

I pray that we may all find ways to become your servants

So that the things of this world will no longer be our masters.

Amen.

August 6, 2011

Our lives are so filled with thoughts of instant results,

That we have grown impatient.

But, we must remember that you have not changed,

And you still work within us when we are in a hurry,

At the pace that seems right and acceptable to you.

Give us patience

To wait for our moments of service.

Give us patience

To be ready to move into action when you call us

Instead of when we don’t think we can wait another second.

Give us the faith to have patience,

Knowing that you’ll come through.

Amen.

August 5, 2011

God,

Help us to learn from other people,

So we can keep from declaring ourselves their judges.

Sometimes,

When we think we are working against being judging,

We still judge those who disagree

Or who have a different view from us.

Help us to learn to accept all,

Even those who we think are the least accepting of others.

Amen.

August 4, 2011

Some days sadness creeps over us,

Like a blanket covering our bodies

And our faces until we feel we cannot breathe,

But we will surely suffocate from the emotions

That stifle our ability to live.

Lord, comfort us.

Some days the joy seems never ending

And we feel completely comfortable in our own being,

Knowing ourselves to be loved

And to be capable of love.

Lord, help us to extend these moments.

Most days are somewhere in between

When we do not feel terribly sad,

But long for the happiness that we know to be fleeting.

Help us, O Lord, to trust in you in all our days.

Amen.

August 3, 2011

In the depths of our souls

There is an emptiness

That cannot be filled by the things of this earth.

There are questions we can never answer,

And some that we may be afraid to answer.

We look to you, O God, to fill the void,

To keep our mysteries,

To fuel our search

And give us the ability to continue to see you.

While we can never know you fully,

As you know us fully,

We pray for your continual revealing,

So our spirits may continue to grow and learn

Of the real goodness in the universe.

Amen.

August 2, 2011

Good Morning, Lord!

Thank you for this day!

Thank you for the sunshine and the rain,

The hot and the cold,

The day and the night.

Thank you for creating a world where people can live

And build communities in your name.

May you be blessed by humanity forevermore.

Amen.