Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to know you and to call you our father. Thank your knowing our thoughts and feelings, our joys and griefs better than we do ourselves. Thank you for being bigger and stronger than all the world’s power. Thank you for the promise that there is a world beyond this one, where we will one day see by your light and where everything even now is perfect and holy and good.
Even so, Lord, we are currently in this fallen world and we can rarely see beyond its murky horizon. We see the ravages of war and illness, climate change and greed, natural disaster and human catastrophe. Please give us the energy and faith to bring hope and to work to spread your kingdom on earth.
We ask for your rich and miraculous blessings for those who are working in dangerous and uncomfortable places to spread your good news. Please enable them to bring peace, forgiveness and security in war zones. Help them to combat disease in nations where hospitals are scarce and health care is privately funded. Protect them as they challenge drugs cartels and people- traffickers and individuals who value money above human lives.
Lord, while others go out to face the dangers, please show us how to support them from here through our prayers, our financial support, our lifestyle choices and our influence on our local MP.
In our own nation Father, as we enter a new era outside the EU, we pray for healing of the divisions between north and south, rich and poor, Brexiteers and Remainers. Please protect us all as new deals and partnerships are worked out between the UK and other nations. Please protect the poor and the vulnerable. Please inspire your people in the UK to find effective and real ways to meet your requirement to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with you.
Finally, Lord, in our church here and in our personal circumstances, please continue to bless us and to be near us. We pray for your continued healing for Mat and for others who are waiting for treatment or recovering from surgery or illness. We pray for those who are mentally or emotionally ill, that they would be cared for and that healing would be allowed to happen. We pray for those who have been bereaved, or who expect bereavement soon. Be with them as they face the prospect of each new day without that special person. We pray for those who have quarrelled or who have given or taken offence, and for those whose most important relationships are under great strain. Please bring them patience and improved communication, and trust. We pray for those in financial difficulty. Lord, bring the dignity of paid work to all those who are seeking it. And please help this church here, this group of people, to be a genuine foretaste of heaven to at least one person this week.
Father, we ask all these things in the name of Jesus, who walked a while on earth and now reigns in the glory and majesty and beauty of a heaven we cannot even imagine.
Amen.