Your voice, O Lord…your voice is powerful and sweet,
tender yet awe-inspiring,
sometimes overwhelming, sometimes unheard.
We give you thanks that you spoke the world into being,
and that you continue to speak through your people and your creation.
We give you thanks for the Word Made Flesh,
and pray that your word would be made flesh again in this place.
Come into our world again, God, and speak your healing word
to those who are broken,
to those who are grieving,
to those who need work,
to those who despair,
to those whose lives are marred by violence or hate,
to those who struggle through flood and flame.
Remind them again and again and again: You are my beloved, precious and treasured,
and I am with you to the end of the age.
Speak, Lord, that we may be whole.
Even as we pray this, we wonder.
We want to hear your voice, but instead we hear our own.
We want to hear your voice, but instead we hear the racket around us.
We want to hear your voice, but instead we hear nothing.
Where is the voice that twists cedars, the voice that calls prophets,
the voice that creates light, the voice that makes animals play?
Where is the voice that brings peace?
Where is the voice that calls our name with nothing but Love?
Lead us again beside your still water, O Lord,
and then trouble those waters with your Spirit
that we might find there your living water,
refreshment and strength as we seek your way.
Open our ears and eyes to you, O God, in the most unlikely of places…
in promises made and kept, in still small voices and in loud raucous laughter,
in the clink of forks against plates, in warm socks, in tired smiles,
in a drip of water, incessant…
open our ears.
We listen.
silence
We pray these and all things in the name of Christ, who taught us to pray together, Our Father…
Submitted by Rev. Teri Peterson, Presbyterian Church of Palatine, IL.
Leave a Reply