Pastoral Prayer - Memorial Day
Prayers of the People / Sunday before Memorial Day
{Sermon Text Philippians 2:1-13}
Glorious God we come before you this morning reminded of your incredible humility, and remembering on this Memorial Day weekend our humble heroes who have taken the call to value others above self in the most radical way.
We especially remember the families of the fallen today, grateful for their unimaginable sacrifice.
We pray that, empowered by You, we will build a future where no others have to make the same sacrifice.
We pray, also, that their sacrifice was not made in vain.
We pray for the day when knees bow at the love, mercy, justice, and peace of your great and humble name -
We pray for the healing that kind of humility would bring to the world.
We pray for healing that kind of humility would bring to our country.
We lift up to you today those in this great nation that we have failed - those whom we must continue to pay attention to and do better by in order to be worthy of the sacrifice of our fallen heroes, and in pursuit of being more like You.
We pray for our homeless.
We pray for our hungry.
We pray for our children - all of our children, our students who suffer in the fear that their school will be the next to endure gun violence.
And Jesus, especially this morning we pray for the children we took from parents at the border of this “land of the free and home of the brave,” and then, we lost.
We pray for the families of the nearly 1500 children that we have misplaced, souls that Jesus lived and bled for, but we couldn’t keep track of - we pray for them, that somehow, someway, wherever they are they would experience your presence.
We pray that they be reunited with their loved ones, and we pray for justice in the face of this horror.
We struggle with the weight of the great ills of our great nation and want to do our part to make it a place worthy of our heroes, and a place that looks a little more like your kingdom, these two notions woven together in a humility that places others above self - and we pray this morning for the willingness and wisdom to do so.
Show us how we can represent You to our community.
May we not just pray but also be moved to action.
May we experience your great healing, Jesus, Your great peace that surpasses understanding in the midst of our own personal griefs, struggles, fears, loneliness.
May we remember you are with us in our pain and call us still do alleviate the pain and suffering of others.
Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, may we stand firm in your love and be so full of it that we overflow, that we pour out in sincere love for others, remaining joyful in hope, patient in affliction and joyful in prayer. We ask these things in the name of Jesus and lift our voices together to pray for this world to be like heaven, saying: Our Father, who art in heaven...
