Prayers of the People #
Oh God, eternal, who greets each new day as on that first day, we join as You have taught in common prayer and bless Your Holy Name, alive with the surety of Your kinship with us and we with one another.
God in Your mercy,
Receive our prayer.
Hear oh God our voices. Hear our glad song, our kind words to one another, see the promise of Your kingdom of peace and goodwill grow among the tare of hatred and strife and fear. Oh God, who can resist your winnowing fork should You labor with it? And we say that there is none. And who can, by their own might, be accounted among the wheat and not the chaff? And we say that there are none. And we say that might has nothing to do with it. Just as a rent cloth cannot be mended by simply pushing the edges together we who zig and zag upon the earth cannot say simply ‘That which I loathe, I will not do.’ Are we not Kierkegaard’s backward walking man who, though he moves steadily away, professes, “Wait. Wait just a moment. I am coming.”? And is it not You who steps forward into that breach, is it not Your thread that crosses our warp and weft? Teach us again and again, oh God, what is good and keep the desire for what is good kindled in our hearts.
God in Your mercy,
Receive our prayer.
We remember this day, oh God, the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murdered August 6 and August 9 1945. What cheek is turned when 70,000 die in an moment, torn apart at the cellular level? Who can make a plowshare of a gadget that flashes the shadows of 60,000 onto walls, shredding the people to nothing? Forgive us, oh God, for this mad international effort, this race to turn quantum mechanics into terror weapons. Bring peace to those victims that live yet. Some say that is is only a matter of time before another nuclear weapon is used. If it is Your will, we pray, may all the silos fill with water, may all the submarines be beached, may every weapon that brings the possibility of megadeaths scorch only the hearts of those that would wield them. Have You not made us creatures that name and number and peer into the fundament of your Creation? Turn our cunning from wretchedness toward righteousness, spring justice from our jaundiced efforts.
God in Your mercy,
Receive our prayer.
Where, oh God, is your bound? There is none such. Where, oh God, are the places that You cannot be? And we know that there are none. When, oh God, have You not been? And we know that even time itself You have crafted like a fine thing in Your hands, crafted yet when you flew over the face of the waters. Out of welter and waste you spoke life and there was life and You spoke joy and there was joy and the tulips You clothed and even the merest sparrow lives fully in Your tender concern. See us, oh God, those of us who need such concern now, who are pushed outside this society we have devised or, worse, are hunted by it. See us, oh God, those of us who are ill, even unto death. See us, oh God, those of us who despair, who weep, who lament the new day and lament the day of their birth. See us, oh God, and those who we raise up to you now either aloud or in our hearts.
God in Your mercy,
Receive our prayer.
How much more we have to say, oh God, how much is in our hearts. Friends, for what else do the people of God pray for this day? PAUSE Search our hearts, oh God, see them, do you not find all there that is unsaid? Look on us, oh God, with gladness. And who are we that You behold us? Kin, friends, beloved, You say. We thank You, Almighty God, this day for Your friendship, sorely needed.
God in Your mercy,
Receive our prayer.
This is the day that God Almighty has wrought. Friends, let us rejoice and be glad on it. In the holy name of Jesus, the blameless lamb, who came eating and drinking, proclaiming the communion of all with all and all with God, we pray
Amen