Morning Prayer

I'm back in town, and it has been a whirlwind few days.  After I got home from church this afternoon, I feel asleep and didn't wake up until it was time to take J to Youth.  I needed a nap!

I was the liturgist today at church.  Today's post is the prayer I used as the morning prayer:

Our father and creator, we come to you in worship today as the Body of Christ.  We come with our hands full; we come with our hands empty – we offer our blessings to you in gratitude and submission; we offer our emptiness to you in supplication and confession.

We offer our sins, our failures, our shortcomings to you in confession.  When we say that we have failed to be an obedient church, the words ring true for us.  Hear our sins, o Lord, and help us to offer them in honesty and humility.

Pause

We offer our gratitude for your grace, for even as we remember our sins, you remind us of your forgiveness.  Remind of, God, of those who we need to forgive.  Create in us heart of grace so that the forgiveness that has cleansed our souls can reach out to others through us.

Pause

We offer our mourning and sadness.  We remember Theo, and we grieve her absence from us.  We remember those who are no longer with us, we remember our hurts and our pain, and we offer them to you.

Pause

We offer our brokenness and illness to your, O God.  We lift up Marilyn to you, and ask you for healing in her sickness.  We remember our neighbors, wherever they are, and we remember their quests for shelter, clothes, and food.  We ask you to create in us pain in their hunger, create in us loneliness in their imprisonment, create in us a need to comfort.  We ask you to enter into the lives of the ones on our minds and in our hearts.  Provide the comfort of your presence in their pain, and lead us to ways to provide help.

Pause

We offer our joy to you, O Lord.  We recognize all of the traces of your light in our lives, and we offer you thanksgiving.  We offer the hugs of our children, the laughter of our friends, the quiet moments of reflection in our lives, and the times when we are grateful for the music that sings over us. 

We offer you our lives, and we ask for your presence on our journey.  We pray today the prayer your son taught us:

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.  Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.