New Year's Eve 2008 Prayer

Gifts: Peace

 

I choose to end this year wishing you peace.

Thanking God for the peace that is here.

Praying for peace.

May we all wage peace this upcoming year.

May peace be with you.

So be it today.

So be it tomorrow.

Amen

Prayer for 30 DEcember 2008

"When perfect love has driven out fear, or fear has been transformed into love, then everything that has been saved will be a unity growing together through the one and only Fullness, and everyone will be, in one another, a unity in the perfect Dove, the Holy Spirit."

  - Gregory of Nyssa, "Homilies on the Song of Songs," 15

 

Gifts: Reconciliation.

1.	an act of reconciling or the state of being reconciled.

 

2.	the process of making consistent or compatible.

 

Loving and Holy Creator,

I thank you for your reconciliation of us to you,

This by your initiation.

With being made right to you I should be able to make peace with my neighbor,

I should learn to live with my neighbor,

I should be able to listen to my neighbor.

But I don’t,

I still hate,

I still take what isn’t mine.

I treat my neighbors worse than I treat myself with rules and walls

Lord,

Forgive me

Help me tear down these walls and break the rules so I can return to being compatible with my neighbor.

For we all live together and have the same goals.

Living and loving.

Together.

I thank you for the gift of reconciliation which transforms.

Amen

A Prayer for Monday 29 December 2008

Gifts: Freedom
How do I value freedom with Christ?
2 Corinthians 3:17 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
Loving God,
Where you are,
We are free.
Freedom from so much,
Freedom from the darkness that scares me.
Freedom from hate that hides you.
Freedom is being set free from all this and being free to see the world through your light.
Through your love.
Freedom is having the weight of the world lifted from me.
Freedom is knowing you have lifted my chains, lifted my weights, lifted my fears and set them free.
I thank you for the gift of freedom and I pray that I live in your freedom,
Giving as much as I have received.
Amen

Signs

What does this say to you?

A prayer for 28 December 2008

Gifts, Hope

Romans 5:5  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

 

 

Glorious God,

Hope is all around,

I hope for a beautiful day knowing it will rain,

But to someone, hope is fulfilled.

I hope for a life that is full,

I hope I will only know if it is fulfilled later.

I hope for the resurrection of my soul.

I hope for laughter and love to be always near,

I hope for better days,

I hope for snowy morning,

I hope for peace in the world,

But Hope will never disappoint me.

For hope is a gift,

Not a wish.

 

Thanks be to God,

Amen

A Prayer for 27 December 2008

Gifts, Joy.

Deuteronomy 16:15  For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.

Acts 8:8  ⁸ So there was great joy in that city.

I have picked a few things that I see as a gift and put them on my calendar to pray about.  I picked joy for this day and I was so surprised when a devotional I receive daily also was about joy. A coincidence? Maybe.

 

God of Joy,

May I be complete in you,

May I see the joy in this day,

The love in this day,

The Peace in this day.

But Lord,

I pray for those who can not see your joy,

Who miss your love,

Who need us to be present with them.

 

I hope for joy in this world to be complete,

So that when I sing Joy to the world

Joy is in the world.

I thank you for your gift of joy.

Amen

A Prayer for 26 December 2008

Gifts, Faith.
2 Corinthians 5:7 We live by faith, not by sight.

Creator of the heavens,
I live by faith,
A gift I hold fast too,
Something that I cannot explain,
Just something that gives me a reason to look at the light of your love.
A faith that sees through darkness,
A faith that finds the light.
A faith that is based on your love,
Your gift to me.
Thanks be to God,
Amen

My Prayer for Christmas 2008

May the spirit of Christmas bring you peace, The gladness of Christmas give you hope, The warmth of Christmas grant you love.

   ~Author Unknown

 

Advent is over.  The time of waiting and preparing is over.  It is time now to experience the gift of Christmas.  My focus the next 12 days will be on gifts.

 

Giving God,

You have come again,

Your gift today is Love,

May my heart experience this love as it is made new,

Again and again.

As I learn about your love,

As I take your love and regift it.

Because there is enough to go around.

This Christmas I am learning to so thanks.

Thank you for love.

Amen

Christmas Eve Prayer

Something’s coming! 

I love West Side Story and it is in revival here in town so the advertisements are playing hourly.  I keep thinking about the excitement of this day and this is my prayer for us.

 

Lord,

Something is coming!

The shepherds in the field have heard it.

Mary has heard it.

Something new.

The excitement is in the air,

May my heart feel this today,

May the unexpected be the expected,

May you in my life be made new again,

Coming to make a change in my world.

Where peace reigns,

Love survives,

Joy blossoms.

And I see you in my world around me.

This year I wait.

Excitedly wait.

With anticipation in my heart.

Amen

Prayer for 22 December 2008

A frozen world

A world that stops as everything stops moving,

A world that is hard to live in.

A world that needs changing,

Thawing,

But in this world is beauty,

The snow covers up so much,

Under the ice, the water still flows,

The light is just a bit longer

Just a bit (exactly 7 seconds today).

There is life coming.

This is the world you chose and choose to enter.

Come,

Warm me with your love, light and warmth,
Come,

Change my world,
Come.
In your mercy, hear me.

Amen

A prayer for 22 December 2008

Faith is planting a seed when there is no sign of rain and no clouds in the sky.
Faith is saying yes to something you believe in, Not knowing what the future holds.
Faith is troubling,
Faith is all I have today because of the hope I have in the messiah.
One who comes to save.
Save with peace.
Save with love,
Save with justice.
Save in ways that do not point to a warrior but a child.
A person building from the position of love and peace will build a new world.
A new world will come.
A real peace will come.
A child will lead them.
May Christmas be in my heart this year.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

a view

A frozen world,
Ice glazed.
Birds dancing on the deck,
Blue skies.
When the sun hits the trees it begins to rain,
The rain that was once frozen to the limbs comes alive.
It drops upon the ice on the ground and makes the glaze appear to float.
Once slick,
Now mush.
Only to freeze again when the sun goes away.

A Prayer for 21 December 2008

Excerpt from Inward/Outward email dated 20 Dec 08

It is very remarkable that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God, whereas the world fell into trembling when Jesus Christ walked over the earth. We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us.  (Dietrich Bonheoffer)

 

God of the morning,

We should be in awe,

We should be shouting in the fields,

We should be running through the streets shouting,

“You better be ready”

We see the coming birth as a day of a child,

But it is for me,

For if there is no birth,

There is no death and ressurection,

The real gift of life for me.

 

 

I pray my heart is on fire for you today.

While I await your coming.

Come and bring peace.

Amen

A prayer for Saturday 20 December 2008

I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me;
I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me.
I said, ‘Here am I, her am I,’ to a nation that did not call on my name.
Isaiah 65

Great and Loving Creator,
What can I do?
What can I say?
How does my heart respond to your prophet’s words?
I ask this today as I watch my world around me.
As I seek to answer the questions.
As my heart reaches to you,
May my answer see you in the world.
Reaching,
Loving,
Giving,
That is you in my life.
With your grace I respond today,
Amen

A prayer for Friday 19 December 2008

Loving God,
You come to those in fields,
You come to those on walks,
You come to those when we are not ready.
But you are ready to change us.
If only we are more willing to listen.
Listen and be ready.
For you do come.
And you keep trying to reach me.
May I just be long enough to be reached.
In your mercy,
Hear my prayer.
Amen

Prayer for 18 December 2008

Feeling hope.
Holy and Loving God,
I wait for the light, feeling some hope,
The hope that comes with that little feeling
The hope that comes with answered prayers,
The hope that comes with a purpose for your children
The hope that holds fast to the you.
Because you are faithful,
You are faithful.
You are faithful.
With your faith in me I have hope for myself.
No matter what, you don’t give up on me.
You keep reaching out to me.
I just need to be open to your reaching.
May I reach back today.
Amen

A prayer. 17 December 2008

God,
I know you are present today,
I know that you love me,
Even me.
I know that your love is freely given
Yet for me to give it, I put on conditions.
Lord,
Open me to the love so that I can learn to give it more.
And see you in the love I give to others,
For this is what the coming of Christ is all about,
Love coming to us,
Abiding with us,
Giving to us so that we can be renewed,
Made new.
See you again this year.
As a child from the heart of this child.
In your love I pray,

Amen

A Prayer for December 16th 2008

“Christmas itself does not change. It is we who change, and the world we inhabit.” From essays on Theology, 15 Dec 2008
Fr Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.


God of today,
I am looking for change but I see it differently today,
I want to change things but I see I need to change,
I need to stop,
I need to see the world,
I need to pray for my friends,
I need to understand my world,
I need to Christmas to be made new again.
Where it is about a child and change.
Where light comes and darkness fades.
Where my heart is loosened and fears are set free
Where peace reigns
Where love prevails,
Where my neighbor is set free from oppression.
May this be the change in my world this Christmas.
Lord, give me strength today.
Amen

A Prayer for Monday, December 15th 2008

Prepared.
Prepared for what is coming?
This is what I got from reading the lectionary scriptures for this week.
I was singing a gospel song “You gonna be ready?” since then.

Most loving God,
You use me in ways I can never imagine.
You tell me not to be afraid.
You are with me.
You are coming.
So I ask out loud, Am I ready for this?
Am I ready to go out?
Am I ready to listen?
Am I ready to pray without ceasing?
Am I ready to see a light in a new way?
Am I ready?

I can only pray and ask that you prepare me Lord God.
In the ways you use me.
Ready me
Amen

Praying

Wanting so much, needing so little. I keep wondering. Will it?