Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for the chance to come to worship you and learn about you and pray to you once more. Thank you for the communal memory of Jesus riding into Jerusalem, adored by some and hated by others. Lord, please put us always on the side of adoration. We are often confused and disorientated by our circumstances. We don’t understand why things are happening and we don’t understand why you allow some things to happen. Like your very first followers, we see a powerful king who also walks a humble path; a divine miracle worker who also is painfully human; a God who can bring his friend back to life, and yet who demonstrates that he is mortal, by letting himself be killed.
Thank you, Lord, that we know the next part of the story, and that death was far from the end for you. Thank you that we know, with at least a part of our hearts and minds, that you are in control and that you are working things for good for those who love you and are trying to follow your paths. Thank you for the promise that eventually you will return and put the whole of creation right again. Please strengthen our belief.
We want to ask your blessing on the new developments here at Rowheath. We pray for the new team members and their families. Help them to find homes and schools and to settle quickly. Please help us all to grow together and trust one another and to encourage people to use the gifts you’ve given. Please enable us to listen for your messages and to act in faithful response. We are starting to reach out for more obvious miracles, Lord , and we need faith both to ask and to see them when they come. We are so conditioned to think everything is coincidental or random, that it’s hard sometimes to recognise your answers to our prayers. Please open our eyes.
In our nation, Father, we ask for healing and hope. Everything seems run down and worn out, including the people. Please light up your church communities around the country as beacons of hope and help. Please provide resources for the food banks, protection for those in danger, and new jobs for those who have been made redundant. Please transform our government into a wise, dignified, compassionate body and enable our politicians to find shared ground and ways forward in nurturing our people. Please remove the hatred and the despair and replace it with love and hope.
We pray lastly for the planet and for all the people who live on it. Show us how to care for our world. We ask for renewable, safe energy supplies. We pray for relief for the people whose lives have been devastated by climate change, particularly in Eastern Africa. We pray for your abundant blessing on the organisations that are working to serve you and protect the poor and the oppressed. Please give them financial support, safety, infrastructure, vision, innovation and trust wherever they are seeking to show your love to people who don’t know you. We pray for wars to end and for war-makers to be removed from positions of power. We pray that the children of war zones would be shown love and enabled to forgive and to build up instead of tearing down. We pray for a thousand daily miracles to bring healing and hope and reconciliation to lives that are shattered by war and injustice.
Thank you Lord for your love and your knowledge of all that is happening.
Help us to be part of your healing .
Amen