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Congregational prayer

 A slight departure from my usual letters...

Here's a prayer I wrote for worship leading at church this past Sunday (Jan 25). The Scripture passage for the sermon was John 3:1-21, so I drew on some of the images from there. 

The final paragraph is adapted from an assurance written by Rev. Dr. Ginny Brown Daniel, in So Loved: Service Prayers for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (posted on the Worship Ways page of the United Church of Christ website). 

“Light has come into the world”

Light has made its home among us as self-giving love.

 “But people loved darkness instead of light... for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”

There are so many places we long to see the light of truth expose evil deeds: 

  • the genocide in Gaza; 
  • the war in Ukraine; 
  • the conflicts in Sudan, Yemen, DR Congo, Myanmar and the Tigray region of Ethiopia; 
  • political and economic instability in many countries across Latin America; 
  • the lawlessness of law enforcement in the USA and their threats to Venezuela, Greenland and even Canada; 
  • Canadian-owned mining companies around the world; 
  • fossil fuel extraction companies and other capitalist, exploitative, war-mongering executive decision-making tables; 
  • polite government processes that disenfranchise, blame and oppress both newcomers and Indigenous people in Canada.

Lord, have mercy.

We perhaps less readily confess we need your light of truth to shine into our own thoughts, words and deeds,

to convict of the evil things we have done and the good we have left undone. For our failure of courage to love with our whole hearts.

Lord, have mercy.

Forgive us. Shine your light into the dark places.

The image of God resides deep within each of us – even the doers of evil. May the Spirit empower us to live by the truth, so the light within us would manifest as light without. May we recognize and draw out that light in others, returning God’s blessing by the way we love.

Amen.

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