During this season of Eastertide, as we celebrate resurrection and new life, let us take a moment in silence to center ourselves in your love. Let us pray: O Holy One, who is, and was, and ever will be; who loves, who saves, who makes all things new, as we celebrate the gifts of the […]
Be Not Afraid: An Easter Prayer for Peace Deals and Signs of Hope (April 6, 2023)
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain: Love lives again, that with the dead has been: Love is come again like wheat arising green. When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain, Your touch can call us back to life again, Fields of […]
The Bond of Our Common Humanity: A Lenten Prayer for Ukraine and Turkey (February 23, 2023)
“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.” – Jimmy Carter Oh, Lord, you shepherd us. You follow us. You lead us through the fog of our times. We get caught up in fear and weighed down by seemingly eternal prejudices. As we enter this Lenten season […]
Three Days: A Maundy Thursday Prayer Through the Last Days of Jesus (April 14, 2022)
Written on Maundy Thursday Three days. Three days to remember and relive Jesus’ last days on earth. Three days to his resurrection. Three days to be reminded that our lives – the best of times, and the worst of times – are borne in God’s love. Forever. Three days to let our prayers for the […]
Change Our Hearts: A Lenten Prayer for a Broken World (March 3, 2022)
Almighty and Everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who will turn away from them. Create and make in us new and apologetic hearts, that, mournful of our sins and acknowledging our misery, we may receive from you, the God of all mercy, perfect forgiveness and […]
Living Toward Resurrection: Indonesia’s Floods, Taiwan’s Train Crash, and Rwanda (April 8, 2021)
God of new life, In these Easter days the wonder of the Risen Christ is close. Walking in the budding woods, resurrection is everywhere, the heart-song of the wild daffodil’s golden center, the magnolia’s blushed cup, the downy new leaf and the rippling brook. It is clear that life-death-life is the pattern at the center […]
Jesus Is Risen: An Easter Prayer Amid Grief in Brazil, India, and Tanzania (April 1, 2021)
At the last minute I substituted for the scheduled writer, and found myself thinking how little different our current world situation is from that of the first Easter. The same uncertainties, political. military, social and civil unrest, and divisions were being played out, while families and communities struggled to live and raise future generations while […]
Scared to Death or Scared to Life: A Lenten Prayer After the Atlanta Shootings (March 18, 2021)
Gracious and loving God, During this season of Lent, as we journey with your Son to the cross and through the cross, we admit that we are fearful. We are scared — scared to let go, scared to join in, scared to open up. We are scared to open our hearts, our time, our homes […]
Come and Fill Us with Your Peace: A Prayer as US COVID Deaths Pass 500,000 (February 26, 2021)
God, in whom we live and move and have our being, there is nothing that separates us from you, your grace, and your love. And yet, sometimes it is so hard to trust that you are at work around and within us, especially this Lenten season when it feels as if we have never left […]
Peace Be With You: A Prayer for a World Behind Locked Doors During the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 16, 2020)
A reading from the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 19 through 29, in the New Revised Standard Version: When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the authorities, Jesus came and stood among […]