Pastoral Prayer for January 24, 2021 

Let us begin with a time of silent prayer.  Let us pray.

Always Seeking-God….sometimes we are so much like the prophet Jonah…loving to receive grace and compassion when it is directed toward us….and yet sometimes so reluctant to offer grace and compassion when it is directed toward others. Especially to those others who may see the world differently than we do, or who may behave in ways that seem inappropriate or odd to us.  Help us, like Jonah, to hear your voice calling to us and reaching out to us.  

O God, you call us into faith and you invite us to make your presence a constant and centering part of our lives.  You challenge us to seek you and to serve you day by day.  You call us into an accepting kind of love, indeed to plunge ourselves into the hurts and joys, ups and downs, beauty and cruelty of this complex and uncertain world in which we live.  Help us to have the grace, and intention, and compassion to do so. 

In this light, O God, and with Jonah as our example, we come to you today just as we are—starkly aware of our human frailties—and yet confident and expectant that with the power of your love and hope and grace within us, we are given the power to become more than what we may be today, indeed even to be more like Jesus.  Assist us on our journey.  Help us to integrate our understandings of your goodness into a faith, and into a faith-walk, that is more consistent, and kindhearted, and life affirming.

Loving God, give us the grace we need this day to follow your lead and to accept your guidance…and to walk in the way of your higher purposes and your divine will.  

Make our weakness strong with your strength; transform our hesitancy into courage and purpose; and alter our unknowing into insight and wisdom.  So that our lives may be clothed with your eternal purposes, and that we may be inspired by your uncompromising and unconditional love.

Through Christ we pray these things.  Amen. 

–Rev. Robert K. Livingston