Pastoral Prayer for the week of October 9, 2016

Divine Hope,

Here we are again.

We sit here, in front of you, in front of the world – and we feel great tension in our presence. A tension in

divisiveness –

of power desired –

of fear and future –

of self and of the other –

We come together to find strength with each other and to bind ourselves to the gift of love you promise – but can you show it to us again?

We have gotten in the way of the story – we have lost the plot.

We have made ourselves the queens and kings of our own story, when Jesus showed us a different way. To be last is a blessing, to be less is to be more He would say – but that doesn’t seem to fit us very well, and so we forget those parables.

Can you show us those stories again? Remind us of who we can be when we live in rebellious grace and scandalous love – show us Jesus in the life around us – so we can be Jesus in our returning into the world.

Ocean’s rise, empire’s fall,

We sometimes wonder if you’ll be there with us through it all.

Can you send us a reminder of your love? Slow our lives, so that we might see the splendor in it-

the smallest moments,

the imaginatively mundane,

the silliest of laughs,

the simplest pleasures,

We look to you, the origin of love, in our deepest troubles. It’ll shakes our windows and rattle our walls. But we return to you, the Constant that doesn’t change. We ask for

strength to stand,

for patience to hold fast,

for grit to push forward.

We ask all of this, right now, as we sit here together, bound in tension and our stories and our questions and our doubts and our troubles and our joys. Become present in our lives and allow us to live in the fullest way, so that we may walk alongside others that they may live in the same way.

Amen.