Reflection and Renewal: We Should Focus On Giving, Not Getting (based on Luke 12:48)

 
God, you’ve told us that the more that we dedicate our lives to love - and to giving that love away - the more that we are growing towards grace.

But we have to admit that we often struggle to live out that kind of generous love. Sometimes we simply get absorbed in our little corner of your world and lose sight of the bigger picture.

And sometimes we avoid living out that kind of sacrificial love because - to us - it seems like your kingdom has terrible arithmetic, God. You tell us to "follow a way of living in which giving is the priority," but we’ve absorbed the message that says that the wisest course of action in life is to "get." We're told to look out for #1, that what we acquire - or do not possess which others do - defines our value, and that we should see our fellow beings as competitors through a lens of scarcity and fear.

We often get it wrong, so we come asking for grace and mercy. Give us eyes to see where we've let priorities other than yours guide us. Give us wisdom to listen - not to the clashing gongs and clanging cymbals of greed, fear, and cynicism - but instead to the still, small voice of your love's life-giving wisdom.

Amen.

Reflection and Renewal: Not Seeing Original Goodness Or Need For Community (based on Genesis 1:31)

God, you are loving and kind. Your grace is bottomless. You want us to reflect that same love, kindness, and grace in your world.

But this can be difficult to do sometimes. We're constantly bombarded with a different message from other voices; voices that say that we are the center of our world, voices that say that our focus should narrowly hone in on getting ahead, voices that say that we should pursue what will gratify us instantly.

As a result, we sometimes find ourselves pushing away from community and connection because we don't want anything to prevent us from having things go our way - because we want to have control.

Other times, we think we're not worthy of being loved. We think that we have no value and that if anyone knew the real us, they wouldn't want anything to do with us.

It can be so easy for us to get off track. Without intending to, we slide back into familiar ways of thinking, so we need your grace.

May your love and mercy be continual reminders of the abundant life and wellbeing that we should wish for all of your creation. May your goodness be a continual reminder of the inherent value that we have and the original goodness which you created the universe with.

May we stay committed to one another and remain active together in the ongoing work to renew and restore your world.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: The Universe Is God's Handiwork (based on Psalm 19:1)

God, you've commanded us to be stewards of the Earth, which you created and called “good.”

Yet all too often we don’t see beyond our own interests. We can easily fall into a mindset that approaches your creation - and all that lives within it - as though we are its owners and it is ours to use as we see fit - instead of approaching it as your stewards.

We mask creation’s witness to your awesome beauty whenever our choices lead to harm, destruction, and disaster.  We sometimes fail to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves; even as simply and indirectly as by existing within systems which benefit us at the end but involve injustice, exploitation, and pollution earlier in the process.

So instead of always working together to fix-up your world, we sometimes degrade and harm it.

Forgive us.

Help us to relate to everyone and everything that surrounds us in ways which recognize that the universe is your sacred handiwork; that all of creation is where you appear and where we worship you.

You are a God of endless creativity, incomparable beauty, and bottomless grace. For this, we give you thanks.

Amen.

Reflection and Renewal: Brokenness Limits How We Give and Receive Love (based on Genesis 2:18)

God, you've created us for community and connection. Yet often we worry about being hurt by others who we think are broken and damaged, so instead we isolate ourselves.

At the same time, we often struggle to see ourselves as anything other than broken and damaged goods, so we withdraw inward.

In both instances, we keep ourselves from experiencing the transforming grace of relationship and connection.

So God, we need your grace. Thank you that your mercy is bottomless and limitless. Help us to mirror how you give and receive love.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: Not Pursuing or Believing In Peace (based on Isaiah 9:6)

God,

The birth of Jesus is an amazing reminder of how much you celebrate and value the world which you created. Thank you for your endless and all-encompassing love.

The angels who announced Jesus' birth sang of that love, which they proclaimed as a message of "peace on earth and goodwill to all."

But if we're honest, we need to confess that sometimes we don't think much beyond our own narrow interests. We all too easily fall into the trap of looking out for #1 and thinking that your world is one where we need to compete with our neighbor to get ahead.

Instead of taking the posture of sacrificial love - which brings about the kind of peace the angels sang about and Jesus taught - we try to achieve peace for ourselves through strength, power, and status.

Other times, we give up hope that peace and goodwill are even possible.  When we see the need and brokeness around us, we can become despairing and cynical.  We must confess that we often lack faith in your promises and your design for abundant life.

We need your help. Keep us open.  Keep us hoping.  Teach us to rest in you.

Amen.

Reflection and Renewal: Be Willing To Be Continually Made New (based on 1 Corinthians 10:13)

based on "Prayer of Confession" by Beth Merrill Neel 

God, we don’t always live out what we claim to believe. We turn away from you, from our neighbors, and from our true selves. We dim your light within us with our pride, our self-righteousness, and our need for control.

Forgive us.

Help us to remember that your love for us is endless, and that you've told us to love others in that same manner.

Help us to have open ears, eyes, and hearts to notice how you call us - again and again - back to love, back to grace, back to your light.

Give us the courage to be willing to be continually made new so that we can fully love you and all of your creation.

Reflection and Renewal: Help Us To Be Tuned In (based on Matthew 6:6)

God, even though we want to have connection with you, the idea of praying can seem weird and uncomfortable a lot of the time.

Sometimes we feel guilty because we don’t think we’re good enough at praying or we don’t it as often as we think we should.  Our understanding of prayer remains limited and we remain stuck.

And sometimes when we pray, we are shallow; treating you like some kind of a vending machine. We can be quick to ask for all kinds of thing, but not nearly as quick to utilize prayer as a time of listening and reflection; as a way to reorient ourselves towards how you’ve asked us to live; loving you and loving others.

And sometimes, we can be so focused on asking for what we want that we miss opportunities to be the answer to other’s prayers.

So God, help us to appreciate the fullness of your love and to remain aware of how you continually move around us, within us, and through us to your world.

Help our eyes to see and our eyes to hear.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: Earth Day Weekend (based on Numbers 35:33)

God of All Life,

We give thanks for the beautiful, life-giving Earth that you created and called good.  We ask forgiveness for all of the ways in which we have failed to be faithful stewards of our common home; which you have called us to restore and renew.

We ask forgiveness for the ways in which we haven’t loved our neighbors as much as we’ve loved ourselves.

May we learn to respect all life, in which your spirit dwells, as a sacred gift. Thank you for inviting us to take part in your kingdom work of making all things new again.

Help us to live a fully-engaged life.

Amen.

Earth Day Prayer - Climate Caretakers

Creator God,

Your creativity knows no bounds and your creation shouts of that boundlessness.

Thank you for sharing that creation with us and giving it to us to take care of and look after as our common home. Thank you for the progress that has been made to address carbon pollution and climate change.

Let us take heart from what has been done and from the progress that has been made so far. At the same time may we use the presence of that progress and your presence with us to encourage our next steps.

May your presence and the promise of future progress give us hope. May we and our leaders not rest on past progress or future promise. Instead, empower us to press ahead. Help us to build on that progress, to express your presence and to fulfill that promise.

With love, grace, patience and perseverance may we learn, pray and act together to care for your creation and its climate.

Amen.

Reflection and Renewal: Do Justice, Love Kindness (based on Luke 18:18-23)

adapted from Service Sunday
by Beth Merrill 

God, we must admit that we can no longer feign ignorance.

You have indeed shown us what you require:

• to do justice - seeking peace & reconciliation, standing with the marginalized and forgotten 
• to love kindness - showing compassion and unconditional caring for those in need 

God of the oppressed, protector of the poor, liberator of the unfree,
help us to live our lives in service to our neighbors and so in service to you.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: Turn Our Hearts Towards Love (based on Matthew 22:39)

God,

You ask us to love others as we love ourselves.  But sometimes our eyes don’t look beyond our own little part of the world. Sometimes we feel so overwhelmed that we don’t open our hands to help those we see that need it.

And sometimes we are guided by what we’ve been told to fear by voices other than yours.

Turn our eyes toward your presence, your action, within us and around us. Open our hands to act as yours in your world. Soften our hearts so that we welcome the stranger, the refugee, the outcast.

Forgive us for when we ignore or shun you in the form of others. Keep us on the path of your kingdom which sets things right by renewing and restoring life.

Amen.

Reflection and Renewal: Your Love Won't Let Us Go (based on 1 John 1:9)

Loving God, you never give up on us.  Even though we fail, wound and withhold love, you love and forgive us. Even though we judge, neglect and withhold compassion, you love and forgive us.

May your all-encompassing love shine through in all that we do. Keep our eyes and our hearts open.

 Amen.

Reflection and Renewal: Judging Others By How They Meet Our Needs (based on James 2:4)

God, we’re grateful that you’ve designed us for connection and relationship.  It is a wonderful reminder that your very essence is love and communion.

But we often get off track. We tend to pin all of our hopes for happiness on a person or people and we often judge people based on how they can meet our needs. When we do this, we take something that you designed and turn it into an idol.

Forgive us.

Help us to find our true joy and happiness by walking with you through our everyday lives. Help us to stay plugged into your main frame. From there, help us to bridge the distances between us, to serve other’s needs and live life at its fullest.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: May We Weep As You Weep and Love As You Love (based Isaiah 1:17)

God,

We are often preoccupied with ourselves, with what we want, and with what will make us feel comfortable. With our focus zoomed in ourselves, those who are suffering and need help are often totally off of our radar.

Remind us again of the things that you require of us; to learn to do good; to seek justice, to rescue the oppressed, to defend the orphan and to plead for the widow.

Forgive our short-sighted vision. Enable us to see this life as a gift from you to be shared. Fill our hearts with your love for all who suffer oppression, injustice, neglect and poverty, even if it means moving us beyond our comfort zones.

May we weep as you weep and love as you love. Deepen our connection with you and all that surrounds us.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: Having Faith That Love Wins (based on James 1:22)

God,

It can easy for us to say we have faith or that we believe that you are love, but it can often be much more difficult for us to actually live that out in everyday life.

Sometimes it's difficult to have faith that you are love when we see the brokenness within and around ourselves. It is easy for us to forget that this brokenness is not the last truth about the world, but only the next to last truth.

Other times we reflexively say "God's in control" or "just have faith," perhaps brokenness in others reminds us of our brokenness and difficulties. This can lead us to avoid confronting the harsh realities of suffering or to distance ourselves from responsibility for the lostness and madness of the world; to try to hide behind a mask of certainty.

But faith isn't either of those things, so we come asking for forgiveness.  

Help us to have true faith; to believe that in the end your love wins ... while also realistically acknowledging the existence of suffering, as well as being willing to travel alongside of all who are hurting, struggling, abused, oppressed, or neglected.

Faith is supposed to be the eye of our hearts, but we often struggle to see that way. Help us to do more than merely paying lip service to the truth that you are love.  Help that truth to positively affect our thinking, actions, and decisions.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (based on Luke 18:9-14)

God,

We seem to struggle with the same things over and over again.  For some of us, it's brokenness and failure, and we think that keeps us from being able to connect with you.

For some of us, it's judgmentalism and lacking spiritual humility that keeps us from being honest about not having it all together.

We're grateful that you strive for connection with us despite the things that we put in the way. It’s thanks to who you are and what you do that we can connect with you.  You took human form and lived among us to bridge the gap between us and to show us how to follow your way of life.

And even though we often have our attention fixed on how bad we think we are or how great we think are, your Spirit is continually making itself visible all around us.

Help us to be both honest about our failures and to not disqualify ourselves because of them ... so that we can relate to you and connect with you.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: We Want Things Our Way (based on 1 Timothy 2:4)

God, you are loving and kind. Your grace is bottomless. You want us to reflect that same love and grace in your world.

But this can be difficult to do sometimes. We’re constantly bombarded with messages from other voices - voices that say we should make ourselves the center of our worlds, that we should narrow our focus on on just ourselves, and that we should pursue what will make us feel good right away.

As a result, we sometimes find ourselves pushing away from connection and community because we don't want anything to impede on our freewheeling and our ability to have things our way.

Other times we think we’re unworthy of being loved, have no value, and therefore assume that no one would ever want to have relationship with us.

It can be so easy for us to fall back into those ruts.  We often get it wrong, so we come asking for forgiveness.

May your grace be a constant reminder of the good that we should wish for all of creation. May your love be a continual reminder of the inherent value we have and the original goodness you created the universe with.

May we stay committed to and remain active in the work of restoration and renewal in your world.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: Lack of Awareness (based on Matthew 6:6)

God,

Even though you want to have connection with us, sometimes the idea of praying seems foreign and scary. Sometimes we feel ashamed and guilty because we don’t think we pray as much as we should. Our understanding of prayer remains limited and we remain stuck.

And sometimes, when we pray we are shallow, treating you like some kind of vending machine instead of being aware of your presence that already surrounds us.  We are one-sided, asking always for mercy and compassion, but not pursuing the same in your world.

Forgive us. Give us another chance to appreciate the fullness of your love. Help us to shed our self-interest and find joy in serving your work of setting things right.

Thank you that you continually move within and around us. Give us eyes to see and eyes to hear.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: Isolation (based on Luke 9:24)

God,

You've created us for community and connection.  Yet we sometimes resist your call to change our hearts and allow a deepening of relationship.

We sometimes nurse our wounded hearts and withhold forgiveness that could transform relationships. Fear for our own security sometimes leads us to close our hearts to those who are in need.

When we keep getting it wrong, we need your grace and forgiveness. Thank you that your mercy is bottomless and limitless. Help us to mirror how you give and receive love; sacrificially.

Amen

Reflection and Renewal: When We're More Like Herod And Less Like The Magi (based on Matthew 2:7-8)

God,

We like to think that we would have been among those who saw the coming of the Christ Child, dropped all that they were doing and traveled to worship the coming of God's love into this world.

And yet, we must recognize all the times we are more like Herod;

• whenever we, in our actions or in our inaction, find our own need for control
  more compelling than the needs of others for health and safety
• whenever we cling to the security of our privilege, rather than standing up
  for the rights of the oppressed 
• whenever we are complicit in the harming of your creation and its inhabitants
  for the sake of profit, or power
• or because we fear to know, and to change, the injustices of this world.

God, though we carry the spark of the divine within us, our souls also contain Herod-like darkness. We pray that you will fill us with your light. We confess our wrong-doing against those created in your image, just as the Christ Child was.

Give us wisdom; with ears to hear where the songs of peace on earth and goodwill to men are being sung in your world, and eyes to see where love is being born.

Amen