Let us pray* for our community,
where, all too often, like Cain,
we have made the offerings of our brothers and sisters
a cause for hostility and division.
We pray that common vision and common purpose may bind us together,
teaching us to value the richness of our diversity
and to rejoice in every fresh glimpse of a world healed
through traditions and approaches not our own.
Teach us to love:
That we may be children of love.
*meditate, hold in good and active thought.
We pray for those lands where brother and sister fight sister and brother,
divided by arbitrary borders, ideology and religion.
We pray for those lands where extremes of wealth and poverty are bitterly divisive.
We pray for those lands where power is grossly abused
and the dispossessed bear the heaviest burden.
Teach us to love:
That we may be children of love.
We pray for all who have been nourished on bitterness
and fed with the wrongs suffered by earlier generations.
We pray for all who have grown to hate people
instead of hating that which evil has done to people.
We pray for the young who are impatient for change
and the not so young who resist all change.
Teach us to love:
That we may be children of love.
We commend to God the special needs known to us:
- For Meteor Blades and his family;
- For those suffering from health problems or injury, especially: fibromyalgia, infertility, miscarriage, depression and other mental illness;
- For Mary (brain tumor), and for Ann (esophegeal cancer);
- For those angry at their children, or worried for them, for those who lack confidence in their parenting ability, and for those raising children with special needs;
- For those coping with stresses large and small: late snow, academic work, taxes, family problems, unemployment, problems with the military, the heartbroken;
- For all those in need, named and unnamed.
As we remember the sick, the sorrowing, and all who are in distress, let us also remember that God has supremely made himself known to us as Savior and call us to share in God’s rescuing work.
Teach us to love:
That we may be children of love.
Lord, we would heal and not destroy.
Teach us the discipline of obedience to the commandment
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,”
and give us the fortitude to go on obeying to the end.
Teach us to love:
That we may be children of love.