Here’s a prayer of intercession for the sixth Sunday of Pentecost taken from a collection of prayers by the late Rev. Jack Shaver.
Prayers of the People: Proper 9 B
Almighty God – the universe, and all that is in it, are your creations.
It is with you that all reality has to do.
How we need our meeting with you to be for real!
Nothing more vital can happen to us than that our meeting be real.
For we mostly try to avoid you.
Your depth is frightening.
Things turn into their opposite when you are real.
Strength becomes weakness and weakness strength;
rich becomes poor and poor becomes rich.
Yet we know that to live without knowledge of you
is neither safe nor right.
God – make yourself known.
Address a word to where we live;
address a word to the events, the tasks, and people that are before us
God, in your love, hear our prayer.
Gracious God – restore our loving.
Life is utterly transformed when we love.
The whole creation sings with glorious voice
when love reigns in our hearts.
Even our suffering world can be embraced
when love teaches the woeful heart to sing.
God, in your universal might, save us from having closed hearts.
Open our hearts to each other
and to all the children of the world.
God, in your love, hear our prayer.
Gracious God – Father and Mother of All –
we don’t want to be about praying for ourselves alone.
We lift up the cries of your creation –
life of the planet earth, the hungry, the homeless;
those whose lives are never free of fear or constant threat
because of cruel strife, tyranny, natural disaster, human greed.
This Sunday we remember especially….
God, in your love, hear our prayer.
We pause now, so that in the silence
each one present may have his and her word with you.
(silence)
God, together we lift those prayers.
Let our cries come unto you.
Now as our Saviour has taught us we say....
~ written by Rev. Jack Shaver, July 6, 1997. Posted on Prayers of the People at West Point Gray United Church.
