joy

All Saints Day prayer

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment

image by geralt via pixabay
 
 
Before you, O God,
    we remember today the ones who went before us.
Not held back by the awesomeness of the task
    they followed you with tenacity and joy.
Full of courage and trust they went to new places,
    ready to stand and suffer with you.
 
Like a cloud of many witnesses
    they stand around us.
 
Before you, O God,
    we remember the saints of our day,
    who do not live by the rigid letter of the law
    but by the wild demands of faith,
    always prepared to give more,
    always ready to be turned inside out,
    knowing that new ways can only be found
    through risk and pain.
 
Like a cloud of many witnesses
    they stand around us.
 
Eternal God,
    we thank you for the witnesses of all times and all places.
May the stories of their lives show us the richness of your grace.
May they inspire us to look deep within our souls.
May they encourage us to take the risk of faith
    and to serve you in new ways.
 
Francis Brienen, United Reformed Church, UK
 
__________________________
 
 
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, 
    let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, 
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 
    looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, 
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, 
    despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, 
    so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.

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Your way laid open before me

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Image, Ion Chibzii from Chisinau. , Moldova., CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
 
The way You have laid open before me is an easy way,
    compared with the hard way of my own will
    which leads back to Egypt and to bricks without straw.
If You allow people to praise me, I shall not worry.
If You let them blame me, I shall worry even less.
If You send me work, I shall embrace it with joy.
    It will be rest to me because it is Your will.
 
Only save me from myself.
Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge 
   to change everything, to act without reason, 
   to move for movement’s sake,
   to unsettle everything that You have ordained.
 
Let me rest in Your will and be silent.
Then the light of Your joy will warm my life.
Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory.
This is what I live for.  Amen, amen.
 
Thomas Merton, 1915 – 1968, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk
 
____________________________
 
 
Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

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prepare us to receive your gift

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Adoration of the Shepherds / Gerard van Honthorst / Wikimedia
 
Lord, may you now let us this year once more approach the light, celebration, and joy of Christmas Day that brings us face to face with the greatest thing there is: your love, with which you so loved the world that you gave your only Son, so that all of us may believe in him and therefore not be lost, but may have eternal life.
 
What could we possibly bring and give to you? So much darkness in our human relationships and in our own hearts! So many confused thoughts, so much coldness and defiance, so much carelessness and hatred! So much over which you cannot rejoice, that separates us from one another and certainly cannot help us! So much that runs directly against the message of Christmas!
 
What should you possibly do with such gifts? And what are you to do with such people as we all are? But all of this is precisely what you want to receive from us and take from us at Christmas – the whole pile of rubbish and ourselves, just as we are – in order to give us in return Jesus, our Savior, and in him a new heaven and a new earth, new hearts and a new desire, new clarity and a new hope for us and for all people.
 
Be among us once again, on this final Sunday before the celebration, as we together prepare to receive him as your gift!  Make it so that we may rightly speak, hear, and pray, in proper, thankful amazement about everything that you have in mind for all of us, that you have already decided regarding all of us, and that you have already done for all of us! Amen
 
Karl Barth, 1886 – 1968, Swiss Reformed theologian
____________________________
 
 
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

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go with me in a new exodus

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Saint Peter Liberated from Prison / The Metropolitan Museum of Art / CC0
 
O God of fire and freedom,
deliver me from my bondage
    to what can be counted
and go with me in a new exodus
    toward what counts,
but can only be measured
    in bread shared
        and swords become plowshares;
    in bodies healed
        and minds liberated;
    in songs sung
        and justice done;
    in laughter in the night
        and joy in the morning;
    in love through all seasons
        and great gladness of heart;
    in all people coming together
        and a kingdom coming in glory;
    in your name being praised
        and my becoming an alleluia,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
Ted Loder, born 1930, American Methodist minister
 
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I sought the Lord, and he answered me
    and delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant,
    and their faces shall never be ashamed.
This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him
    and saved him out of all his troubles.

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prayer at the shortest day

/ Eric Mathews / Leave a comment
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash  
 
From the rising of the midwinter sun to its setting.
    scatter the darkness with the light of your love, O shining One.
Make me short on mean thoughts,
    long on offering words of comfort.
Make me short on being driven,
    long on paying attention.
Make me short on focusing only on my own,
    long on looking beyond.
Make me short on obsessive lists,
    long on spontaneous acts of kindness.
Make me short on mindless activity,
    long on time to reflect.
Make me short on tradition as habit,
    long on re-discovery and re-owning.
Make me short on rushing and tiring,
    long on walking and wondering.
Make me short on false festive jollity,
    long on stilling and rooted joy.
Make me short on guilt,
    long on being merciful to myself.
Make me short on being overwhelmed,
    long on peaceableness as I set forth this day.
 
Tess Ward, Retreat leader and writing in the UK
 
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But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; 
    then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, 
    full of mercy and good fruit, 
    impartial and sincere. 
Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

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