by Barry Howard

Gracious and patient God,

Today I pray for those who are members, formally or informally, in the congregation I serve.

I pray for the young and the elderly, the sick and healthy, the employed and the unemployed, the happily married and the unhappily married, the active and the semi-active, the veteran saint and the new believer, and the spiritually passionate and the spiritually frustrated.

I am aware that there are diverse and divergent life experiences confronting each individual on this day. I pray for those who are at the top of the mountain, experiencing success in their business, stability in their home, growth in their faith, good health, and/or unspeakable joy in their heart.

I also pray for those who are currently in the valley of despair, experiencing frustration in their business, friction in their home life, lukewarmness in their faith, mounting concerns with their health, and/or perplexing anxiety in their soul.

I pray for every member of this spiritual family to know and appreciate the value of spiritual community, to worship and to serve with regularity, to listen and to speak with intentionality, to be honest and to be humble, to be reverent and to be respectful, and to weep and rejoice, privately and together, as needed.

Help us as your family to balance those ongoing tasks of reaching out to those outside our family while ministering to each other within the family, so that neither task is lacking.

Help us as your people to work energetically for the common good of your community-yet-under-construction, so that our personal ambitions and our preferential agendas do not derail or defeat your initiatives that are often invisible to the self-absorbed eye.

Help us as your church to experience the joy of serving, the elation of cheerful and sacrificial giving, a peace that surpasses understanding, and the unique bonding that comes from sticking close by each other during all of the seasons of life.

Help us as your children to continually and wisely realign our lives, not conforming to the illusions of pop culture, but always being transformed by the durable and timeless work of Jesus Christ.

Keep us in tune with your Spirit who convicts and comforts, guards and guides, equips and encourages, and who is working actively to generate good in all circumstances, especially those difficult circumstances that we perceive as devoid of good.

Since life in this world is imperfect and every individual life including our own falls short of your standard, teach us to be more gracious and less judgmental, more inclusive and less exclusive, more compassionate and less condemning, because we have already seen this kind of grace demonstrated in the story of Jesus.

In this crucial day in time when it is tempting to neglect spiritual community due to our busy schedules, to replace worship with trendy entertainment, and to prioritize self-interests above service, remind us that we are people of the towel, both to wash each other’s feet, to dry each other’s tears, and to wipe clean the slate of sins on earth even as you have purged our sins from our private record in heaven.

Encourage and equip us to be your hands and your feet, your light and your love, and your disciples and your servants in a world that needs authentic witnesses of your love and your mercy.

May we receive each day as a gift, and like Jesus, to value relationships above the quest for riches and the preservation of traditions, and to prioritize covenant loyalty above comfort and convenience.

As you prepare us to live life to the fullest, shape us into incarnate representatives of your presence and exemplary constituents of your grace, for we pray in the name of the One who came to give us life and life more abundantly.   Amen