PASTORAL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit, come. On this Pentecost Sunday, come into our lives, into our midst and into our world. Come breathing peace, and whisper to each troubled soul, each wounded body, each broken heart, each raging spirit. Help us to breathe in your reassuring presence, your quiet strength, your unfailing love, your mysterious ability to make a way out of no way. By your mercy, help us to breathe out our fear and anxiety, our impatience and indifference, the belief that we’re too small to make a difference and the hostility and hatred that allow us to build walls and turn away from others. Heal our brokenness, comfort our wounded, weary hearts, and show us what part we can play in tending and serving the people and creation you so dearly love.
Holy and loving God, we are a wounded, weary people. We lift before you those who are sick, facing procedures, battling cancer, scrambling to hold the pieces of their lives together, heading out on adventures and in need of your sheltering presence. We pray for our country and our world as we continue to confront the ravages of COVID-19. The numbers of cases and losses stagger us, but before we close our hearts to the enormity of it all, remind us that each number represents a person, a loved one, a child of your heart. Comfort us in our grief and deepen the compassion we offer one another. As individuals and companies, restaurants and faith communities wrestle with the unknowns of how to move ahead in the midst of a pandemic, give us wisdom in discerning when to stay home and keep the doors closed, when to open the door and welcome others in, how to stay safe and where the line is between fear and foolishness, and how we can most faithfully walk through these days with you, each other, and the most vulnerable among us.
We pray especially today for the people of the Twin Cities, for the family and friends of George Floyd who are asked to make sense of that which makes no sense; for the police force charged with the task of maintaining the peace while also being confronted by the brutal actions that unleashed so much violence; for the African American community there and across the country now expressing their rage after years of racism and profiling, inadequate access to health care and unfair employment and housing practices. Lead us, O God, through the minefields of this time. Give us ears to listen to one another’s pain, voices to cry out for justice and truth, hearts and minds to imagine together a new and different tomorrow, and leaders who will call all to lay their weapons down in order to search together for the road ahead.
Our prayers are many, spoken and unspoken. Hear us as we pray, and as we join our voices in the prayer that Jesus taught: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
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