BINDING SOUL AND SOURCE
Prayers for the Church Street Family
March 4, 2021
Rev. Dr. Jan Buxton Wade
What gift can we bring: What present or token?
What words can convey it- the joy of this day?
When grateful we come, remembering rejoicing,
What song can we offer in in honor and praise?
(Hymn by Jane Marshall)
In these hours past you spoke not a word, but the day was saturated with your sacred presence. Holy silence sang through tiny buds on nubby branches and happy tufts of green grass, washed clean by recent showers, sunned themselves on the lawn. Both the delicate blossoms of Lenten roses and the stems of the old yew fluttered when you passed by. Even now crystal stars are clustering above, a sparkling choir to sing your serenade of rest. In this ordinary day, you have come to us in extraordinary ways. Indeed, what song can we offer in honor in praise?
We remain humbled by the endless ways you express your love for us and offer our gratitude for these personal ways you have appeared to us this day . . . . . . . . . . Yet despite your presence and guidance, we feel the sting of the instances when we let you down . . . . . . . . . Sprinkle us with fresh water from your stream of forgiveness, we pray, and remind us that tomorrow is another day, teeming with opportunities to honorably serve the Author of all our Days.
And now, Caring One, we place in your compassionate care these ones whom you love, as they render to you their own thanksgivings and their personal struggles.
Give each a sense of your grace and presence as they face their individual challenges:
- Gratitude: Two visits with homebound friends
- Prayers appreciated: A job has opened up
- Three grateful for church help in securing vaccine
- Thanksgiving for last week’s successful surgery
- Young mother released from hospital
- Prayers for member having delicate surgery Friday and wisdom for his surgeons
- Healing friend with Covid, on ventilator
- Easing anxiety of new mother-to-be
- Colleague recovering from difficult surgery
- Upholding one with lymphoma
- Prayers for friend awaiting biopsy report
- Member with stomach ailment, awaiting pathology report
- Recovery for friend in ICU with multiple injuries
- Friend with pancreatic cancer and his caregiver wife
- Sister struggling with memory problems
- One grieving the end of a relationship
- Comfort for one enduring radiation treatment
- Mother with increasing memory deterioration
Give thanks for tomorrow full of surprises,
For knowing whatever tomorrow may bring,
The Word is our promise always forever.
We rest in God’s keeping and live in God’s love.
Guardian of our Sleep, grant us a peaceful night, and look with kindness upon all whom we love, for we place our trust in you, Our Keeper, and your Blessed Son who invited us to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
