"Prayers of the Community"

A Prayer by Marion Allaart
July 9th, 2009

 

Let us join our hearts in prayer

 

O God of Grace and Beauty:

 

We quiet now to your presence and allow ourselves to attend to the ever – miraculous beat of our hearts, the ebb and flow of our breath that replenishes us each moment.  We are able to 'let down' secure in the knowledge that we are forgiven, loved and free.

 

Silence is a friend which helps to cool the heat and slow the pace of our furious living.
We're invited always to find the quiet centre in the crowded life we lead which clears the chaos and the clutter and clears our eyes that we can see all the things that really matter, and allow us to be at peace and simply be.

 

We offer ourselves to you just as we are.  Being honest about our pain and shortcomings allows your Spirit to enter into us in our deepest recesses and transform us.  You can only free us from that which we are willing to surrender.

 

Help us to make space within our thinking and stay open to re-examining even our most cherished beliefs and sacred cows and set aside our need to be right.  Raise our courage when we're shrinking and lift us up when we are called to use our Voice that we might grow into a Christ-like compassion that is clear and strong, rooted and grounded in love. When our intentions/actions are aligned with our own spiritual essence, the world is definitely a safer place to be.

 

How blessed are we this morning.  Yesterday afternoon, evening and overnight we were the receivers and rapt audience of a full seven hours of thunderstorm.  It created a wild beauty of flash and rumble which must have rivaled the Celebration of Light however lovely it might have been.  Today we sense, smell and feel how sweet the rains new fall is indeed.

 

At the same time we pray for areas of the world that are experiencing drought conditions such as France and Spain and southern Texas.  But particularly we think of the Okanagan, oppressed by heat and threatened by fire. We pray for the Firefighters as they work hampered by a wind that is blowing through the valley untypical for this time of year. The wind makes it doubly hard to navigate & also to have the water fall where it needs to go.

 

We pray for the people of the downtown eastside who more and more are feeling like there's no place to go, who are experiencing the intensification of police presence and government strategies to eradicate them from the neighbourhood.  Help us not to give in to the pervasive resignation but rather to keep looking for what will work for the good of all in this area so that we don't stand for any disposable people.

 

Let us travel in the Spirit, open to each others pain, joy, grief, victory and loneliness. We hold out to you, O Christ, all those who struggle with chronic or debilitating injury or disease; those that suffer from depression or addiction; those in deep life change or economic uncertainties.  Save us Lord from despair and lead us back to life. 

 

We lift up those to you now in silence for whom the prayers are written on our hear.

 

(Moment of Silence)….

 

And, Lord, we thank you – for this loving and giving community;  for family and friends; for life in an abundant, verdant territory;  for the adventure and challenge of an evolutionary Christianity and a conscious and ever-awakening inner being.

 

Let us dwell this week in the heart of God, and Christ in ours and so be filled with the fullness of God. 

 

Let us say together the prayer we have been given.

 

Loving God, in Whom is 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.

Lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom

The Power

And the Glory

Forever and ever,

Amen.