Here’s
a responsive litany for the start of a new year. It was written by the Rev. J.
Lee Hill, Senior Pastor of the Christian Fellowship Congregational United Church
of Christ in San Diego, and posted on the Worship Ways page of the United Church of Christ website.
Prayer Litany:
Our Times are in Your Hands
God
of new beginnings, God of sacred endings,
we
gather tonight under the shade of a darkened sky,
in
this in-between time and space,
unsure
of what the future holds…
awaiting
transformation, renewal, the chance to begin again.
Our times are in Your
hands, O God,
give us hope for the
journey.
We
have traveled through dangers seen and unseen,
we
have tiptoed through dark nights of the souls
and
wrestled against powers that should have kept us down.
Our times are in Your
hands, O Lord,
give us courage for
the journey.
Encourage
us to be ever mindful of Your Still Speaking Voice;
to
dance without fear when the morning has come,
and
to know that with the coming of Your Light
fear
must release its death-grip on our lives.
Our times are in Your
hands, O God,
give us light for the
journey.
Today
we stand in this present moment,
frustrated
by miscarriages of justice,
angered
by the lack of collective concern
for
black and brown bodies,
exasperated
with a broken immigration policy,
racism,
sexism, homophobia, mass incarceration
and
we deeply grieve the growing numbers of deaths by gun violence;
can
we make it through this night without some form of gun violence?
Our times our in Your
hands, O God,
give us justice for
the journey.
The
future stretches out before us full of mystery and full of surprise.
We
need You, God of New Beginnings, to set the course,
and
guide our feet in the way of righteousness.
Our times are in Your
hands, Triune God,
give us life.
~
from Watch Night Service 2016, written
by Rev. J. Lee Hill, Senior Pastor, Christian Fellowship Congregational UCC of
San Diego (edited). Posted on the Worship
Ways page of the United Church of
Christ website. http://www.ucc.org/worship_worship-ways
