Prayer of Intercession: After Easter

Here’s a prayer of intercession written for the days following Easter.  It comes from the World in Prayer website.

Prayers of the People:  After the Resurrection

"Go stand in the temple

and tell the people the whole message about this life." - Acts 5: 20

In these early days after the resurrection, we wonder what it all means.

We can relate to the women who fled the tomb with terror and amazement.

We understand Thomas and his need for proof that would come

only by touching the wounds and seeing the nail marks.

We understand the fear and confusion
that kept the disciples in the shadow cast by closed doors.

We also keep company with the travelers on the Emmaus road

who felt the strange burning of the truth and hope and love

weaving into the sadness that consumed them on their walk.

We find ourselves in the eternal movement
between fear and faith, doubt and conviction, wonder and worry,

and we trust that you are present with us, O God.

We trust that like the disciples we will be able to stand

and tell the whole message about this life that:

Love is stronger than hate
Life has the final word over death
Beyond what we can see with our eyes,

there is a bond of humanness that draws and keeps us together.

We watch with anxiety as the Korean peninsula reverberates with new tensions
and the fragile lines between North and South Korea

and the world wide community is strained once again.

In the midst there are also voices of reason and peace;

perhaps they speak in whispers, but they speak nonetheless.

May those whispers rise to shouts
that proclaim the way forward with words and not weapons.

As the machines of greed and war trample the world and its peoples,

we remember that there are seeds of justice and love and goodness and grace
that are planted and watered every moment of every day.

We give thanks for those who:

- rise early in the morning to prepare food

at countless soup kitchens around the world;

- search the night streets for lost children

and shepherd them to places of safety;

- keep watch amidst the sick and dying

in countless hospitals and in countless places;

- speak words of compassion in the face of hate.

It is a complicated and frightening world.
Strengthen us as we stand and bear witness to this whole life,

the life of the Risen One,

even Jesus Christ Our Lord.  Amen.

~ posted on the World in Prayer website.  http://www.worldinprayer.org/