Prayers of the People (Mother's Day, Christian Family Sunday on May 12, 2013)

Prayers of the People

God of joyful hearts, God of loving hearts,

God of summer, God of midday heat,

Thank you for this season when spring ends and opens to Summer’s welcome. 

We see around us in our town hundreds of dandelion globes, their seeds ready to fly to the farthest, and yet-to-be yellow dandelion buttons, embroidered on the green grass.

Most loving God, thank you for our church family of all ages – from the youngest Jah-bi and Geordie to Connie who moved to Nanaimo last week. We say farewell, … and watch the young children grow; in the midst of all these changes, your love and your being with us doesn’t change. For your blessings bestowed upon us all, we are blessed to continue to be one in your name. We remember how Jesus prayed for his disciples before he departed to be one with God; “so that they may be one, as you and I are completely one.” God being our helper, may our church family continue to be one and in unity in faith and in love as long as we gather in this house of God to praise you and work for you.

God, Source of life and love, we give you thanks this day for our families.

We know that there are many different kinds of families.

And you are One and give the same, sufficient love to all the families; regardless of their differences, the different compositions and the different stories, the substance of all is your love; the ultimate source of all love which heals brokenness and gives a new strength to the wounded to recreate stories of life.

We ask your blessings on our loved ones.

Grant us grace to live together with respect for one another.

Help us to honour each other’s uniqueness.

We pray for partners and spouses,

That they may receive the gifts of love, empathy, joy and delight with each other.

We pray for children, who are a great gift to all of us. 

Bless our homes with love.

Help us find special joy in our family relationships and in our church family.

Loving God, now our prayers reach out to the newly divorced. Once they made their vows before you, radiant with love and hope, convinced they had found a soul-mate for life. Today they are a mixture of grief and relief, aching from a raw wound in their being, uncertain of their own wisdom, distrustful of others, anxious about the future. (this paragraph is inspired by the prayer written by Bruce Prewers's)

Saviour-Friend, with your Spirit, reach into the secret places of the deepest hurt. Cleanse the wounds and be the process of healing. Restore their broken self-confidence and grant them the invaluable gift of your peace. (this paragraph is inspired by Bruce Prewers')

Loving God, we pray for all the stepfamilies and adoptive families. All the family stories are unique and created like a moment of the uniting of elements in the cosmos. It’s a work of creation. It`s a work of love. Great energies are required and combined to weave one story, one memory, one root, one trunk, of the tree of life. Bless every family in your name and grant them peace and loving joy and delights of living together.  Especially, as we celebrate Mother’s day, we pray that God blesses every stepmom, birthmom, adoptive mom, lesbian mom, gay dad, grandma, foster mom, single mom, super mom, staying at home mom, mom in the first world, mom in the third world, and everyone who gives mothering and parental love to children. Be with them as they wrestle with the angst of parenting and as some of them are tested by social prejudices.

Remember every mom who suffer from the loss or illness of her child now. Remember those women and mothers who died of the garment factory fire in Bangladesh last month. 

 




Give wisdom to those who work and are involved in the area of education for children.

We pray these in the name of Jesus Christ whose love never wearies even through the midday's heat of the summer, through the hardest season of our lives. Your love regenerates in us new energy, new possibilities, new power to love fully for one another. Your love gives us water of life which never dries. Our being, our sustenance is dependent on your love. For our love’s sake, we pray. Amen.