Prayers of Adoration & Confession

We praise you, God of radiant love, under the light of the life giving sun.
When the blue skies stretch clear and wide, our hearts open with joy to reflect your light,
the first of your creative acts. Let there be light for us today: your light of love in our hearts,
peace in our community, joy in our sharing, and wisdom in our engagement with your word.

Amen

We praise you, God in the water of life, with a yearning that reaches to the skies.

When the precious rain falls to soak our land’s longing, we feel the relief of spirit that is your spring of new life within.
Quench the thirst of our souls today, help us to be swept up by the current of the cleansing flow in which we are baptised.

Amen

We praise you, God, Christ-seed of new life, on this good earth from which we draw our life.

When the soil rejoices in the rain’s fall with seeds bursting green, we are moved by the mystery of your creativity.
Help us to let go in our living that, by your Spirit’s grace, faith’s new growth might germinate and sprout in the ground of our being.

Amen

We praise you, God in holy trinity, communion of loving life.

When we meet you in the breaking of bread, we know ourselves even closer to you and to one another.
Feed us in our frailty and strengthen us to be your people of faith, hope and love.

Amen

We pray amidst symbols of life: light, water, flowers, plate and cup.
Sit with the vulnerability of our humanity, the reality of our living. How have we succeeded,
how have we failed as God’s people of love this week? – loving one another as Christ has loved us?

We pray for grace and mercy:

Forgive us where we have fallen,
shine your light for us,
give us to drink of your living water,
nourish us in love.

In the name of Christ.
Amen.

This is the best of all:
when we are empty, God fills us;
when we are disheartened, God is compassionate;
when we are wounded, God brings healing;
when we confess our failure to love, God forgives.

In Christ, through Christ and because of Christ, our sin is forgiven.
Thanks be to God!

by Ian Ferguson, offered for worship, 10/2/19

Prayers of the people

Oh Divine One, be with us as we pray .

The deep, misty dark void with energies swirling before the universe is formed,
the waters coming up to your neck,
nothing to grasp, or to stand upon, feeling God is nowhere.

The blue Lake Gennesaret /Galilee, choppy, stormy, cold….
pushing out the boat, bone weary, into the deep.
Trusting this stranger and then the miracle of fish.

Your pounding feet running to follow the path made by the huge walls of water
revealed by God , ‘who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over”.

These deep scenes are scary, unknown bottomless like our emotions, psyches,
hearts the deep of the ocean. The depth and complexity of the world’s trouble;
sickness, floods, the fires raging or the dry deep drought,
where we have not listened to the depth of wisdom of the Old ones who
know the ways to slow and stop the fire, all the wounding of Gaia.

O God, where will it go, where will it end? We fear the deep, the unknown.
We can only see so far. Can we trust He who asks us to go out into the deep?
It is unexplored, no boundaries, dark and uncertain.

The Authorities and power of this world seem unfathomable, impossible to contain, hopeless.
Even those on spiritual paths feel like they are drowning, Even more women, the poor,
the ill, LGBTQI community, oppressed races are all drowning.

God, when the deep void is covering us, help us to believe that you create new life,
light and us; You challenge us to try again. To go into the deep,
stretching us to go further into the bottomless unknown.

Divine one, give us trust and faith that in the deep.
There is life, fish for all, and transformation.
That the drowning waves will part, letting us through, letting in the light,
that life comes out of the void.

Make us draw from the deep wells of community life with help,
listening, giving comfort, offering grace and love,
reaching down a hand into the deep for the drowning.
Lessen all anxiety and fear of the flood, sun, fire, loss and disease
and give strength to those drowning;
to those helping.

God, help us to remember: we are redeemed, the deep waters part and in to Zion
we go singing, to be fishers of all humanity.

Bless the Church, the World, our community.
In Jesus name we pray,

Amen.

by Jenne Perlstein, offered for worship, 10/2/19