Each new day is a gift from God, and each Sunday is a double gift. On this day we unite to praise and thank God for all His goodness to us, and to ask His blessing upon our lives as we seek to do His will in His world. Worship is always an opportunity for spiritual growth and the promise of a new beginning. Therefore let us, with confidence, worship God.
Pastoral Prayer
We who are Thy children bow before Thee in gratitude and wonder, O heavenly Father. We thank Thee for all those things which give meaning to our lives, and enrich them by Thy presence throughout every moment of our lives. We praise Thee for our families of origin, for the families we ourselves have created, and for the worldwide family of humanity. Teach us how best to utilize all our relationships for the improvement of everyone around us. Keep us from focusing so much on ourselves that we forget or neglect others in all their needs.
And as we express gratitude to Thee for Thy kindness toward us, on this day in particular we thank Thee for Thy gift of the Jews to the world, and especially to Christianity and Islam. We praise Thee, and them, for their inestimable contributions to all the people of this planet. We look around us and we see Thy handiwork in many other aspects of Thy creation. We read history, and we observe Thy hand in the lives of people who have lived before us and who benefited from Thy love and grace. We study the ever expanding universe and we are inspired by the music of the spheres which we can hear by means of astronomy and cosmology. Keep us from ever taking any part of Thy creation for granted, and enable us continually to be struck by the length and breadth and height of Thy loving purposes.
We pray for people who are bearing heavy burdens at this time: those who have decisions to make which are overwhelming them; those who have been catapulted into grief because of the death of someone they have long loved; those whose lives have unraveled because of bad choices; and those who deliberately have cut themselves off from everyone, and who thus are far less likely to hear Thy voice speaking to them. We pray especially for any of our fellow citizens who are ill because they are too poor to be able to afford proper medical care. Be with the President and Congress as they continue the struggle to effect changes in our medical delivery system. Inspire them to seek the good of all and to ignore whatever political cost there may be to themselves in the intensity of the debate. We ask these things in Thy name and for Thy sake. Now we pray together the prayer Jesus taught his disciples, saying, Our Father….