16 February 2025

If you’d like to pray along with Pastor Laura Aase, can do that right here.

God, your heart knows no bounds. You love me, even as I divide my heart up and lose sight of the scope of your love. Yet, you show me what love looks like and it never quite looks like what I think it should. Thank you for that. You are faithful to me in all things. So stir up my faith today. To want to preach and to sing and to pray of your love. And even if my wanting isn’t so heartfelt or pure, I know your love can carry me and inspire me and help me to do my job. To love. So help me love me before I hit the ground running. You can work miracles through flesh and bone, even mine. You even work with my woeful heart and my grabby hands. You break my heart wide open with your possibility and promise. And you loosen my hands to receive and to reach out. And you bless me to bless others. Me and my woeful heart. Help me to speak your love that convicts and comforts. Help me hear it first for myself so then I can speak it genuinely. And then send me out to live into your way, into your reality, into your kingdom. And may I see a glimpse of it breaking in. Into my own life. Into the world today. Change my heart so that I can see how you want it all to be. And when I get it wrong, change me again.

Fill those who love me so well with your love and your ways. It’ll help us love each other better. Encourage my colleagues. Embolden them as blessed and transform their woeful hearts. Remind them and remind me that we are a WE! An all y’all. In God’s kingdom, that’s just how it works. And we are not alone. And especially for the women pastors who seem to especially be in the targets of those who want to discourage or even harm. Give us faithful words to speak into hate and cloak us with your armor.

Thank you for the promise of Jesus, calling me close to him to be blessed and to be sent. Ease my worry about the world long enough to breathe deep your promises and to breathe it out into that same world. Fill me with your wily Holy Spirit! I need it so badly. Amen.

Ok dear Pastor, dear Deacon, dear Chaplain  – take some good, deep breaths. And remember, you are not alone. Don’t be afraid – God is with you.