Category: Examen
Prayer . . .
One of the best aspects of serving in Regional Ministry is the opportunity to visit many of our congregations during the year. Often, I am there for the morning to be present, sit in on a Sunday school class, and worship. But, sometimes I am there to offer words from the pulpit, communion table, teach a class, or like last Sunday, graced with the responsibility to offer the pastoral prayer. For the non-Disciples and possibly non-Christian who reads this blog, the pastoral prayer is a time when one voice offers a prayer of intercession during worship. Sometimes it is followed by the Lord’s Prayer, but it does not have to end this way. Here is the prayer I offered at First Christian Church in Edmond last Sunday. My thanks to the ministers, Rev. Chris Shorrow and Rev. Jerry Black for including me in worship leadership.
As the community of faith gathers for prayer I bare the gratitude of your Disciples siblings all across Oklahoma for your willful work to be a voice of Gospel here in Edmond. I encourage you focus on the image of the person for whom you are grateful this morning as we center hearts and minds for prayer.
Let us pray . . .
God who speaks and listens:
we’ve come to hear and experience good news:
Your steadfast love never ceases. Your mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
they are reviving with each breath we take.
Great is your faithfulness that you incarnate in all humanity and blossomed
in Jesus of Nazareth, who like prophets before him, bore witness to your
Good News with his life. It is Jesus’ birth that we celebrate as we wait for
your Advent of life giving hope, compassionate peace, balanced joy, and
steadfast love.
God who listens:
there are many people we are missing,
many relationships broken,
many known and unknown to us that have left this life and
are now in your presence.
Absorb the questions and cries of the grieving.
Embrace those praying for medication to work,
for tests to be negative,
for the skill of doctors and nurses.
Strengthen the voices and hands that speak out against
injustice and speak up for equality.
Rekindle your Spirit in each of us to be refuge and strength for our neighbors
in times of change, when the mountains shake and the waves roar,
when fortune blinds us, and when violence takes your children.
Celebrate and dance with us in our joys and laughter.
God who speaks:
help us filter out the noise of our culture and the routine mental
conversations so we can hear your will for our living.
Call us to service. Call us to live reconciled. Call us to prepare a way in
our own living to be disciples of Christ and proclaim your Good News today
and everyday we draw breath.
Call us to pray. Amen.
Wednesday Devotion
I am leading our staff devotion today. Each Wednesday we gather in person for a brief time of listening, prayer, and conversation. These are the words I will share today.
Opening Thought
Is God Speaking to Me?
Customarily, when we read the Bible we listen to its ancient words, allowing it to tell us our ancestor’s stories. But, what would it mean to read the Bible by allowing it to help us tell the stories of our lives? What if we read our joys, our fears, and our doubts into the biblical narrative?Then God’s question to Adam and Eve after they have eaten the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden — “Where are you?”– would become a question for us, for now. What are we doing in our lives at this moment? Are we ashamed? Are we hiding from something, from someone? Are we running away? What part of Adam and Eve’s story is our own? Asking such questions is the beginning of midrash.(1)
Luke 16:1-13 (edited)
Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to the rich man that his manager was squandering his property. So he summoned the manager and said, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” Then the manager said (thought) to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” And his master, the rich man, commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’
Naming Those in Need of Prayer and Remembrance . . .
‘Lord, purge our eyes to see
within the seed a tree,
Within the glowing egg a bird,
Within the shroud a butterfly,
Til, taught by such, we see
beyond all creatures, thee.’
Creator God, for daily bread
and all who work
to bring your harvest home
we bring our thanks today.
(pause)
Forgive our ingratitude
we who have so much
yet waste what you have given.
(pause)
For those whose harvest is poor,
whose crops have withered,
water tainted, children starve,
help those who bring relief
and bestow on us
an unaccustomed generosity,
that all might share from your garden
and all might sing your praise.
(pause)
Creator God, provider of all
we bring our thanks today.
And we bless each other
that the beauty of this world
and the love that created it
might be expressed though our lives
and be a blessing to others
now and always
Amen.(2)
Parting Thought . . .
May God bless us with work and good new to be and do this day and the next.
——–
Notes
1. Sandy Sasso, God’s Echo, Paraclete Press, 2007, p. 3.
2. John Birch, “Harvest Thanksgiving – Traditional & Contemporary Liturgy,” Faith and Worship – Prayers and Resources.