27 October 2024 Prayer for the Chaplain, Deacon, Pastor

If you’d like to listen to Laura pray for you, click right here: https://www.cgpmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Oct-27-2024.m4a

Faithful God, you free me to love and I’m always grasping for chains. For lists. Improvement plans. For ways to save my own self and the people who I serve. Oh dear, God. You know this about me and my knee jerk reaction to grabbing onto stuff a little too tightly. So loosen my grip, break open my heart today so that I keep the main thing the main thing. Your love is primary. Your faithfulness is something I can count on. Your activity in my life and in the life of the world is everywhere. Help me to see it with brand new eyes today so that I can have the courage and even just a little bit of faith to live like I believe it. What a miracle it is that you love me. And that you dare to show me in endless ways the thing we often call THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. And sometimes that mystery is revealed in glimpses and small doses that almost knock me over. And suddenly your good news seems to be singing through my whole life like church bells rippin’ Holy! Holy! Holy! Thank you God for being God so that I am not. And thank you for always being faithful to me in the midst of unending change. Your love doesn’t change – it transforms everything.

Help me to love well today, and to forgive me if I don’t. Especially help me love those who love me best and most. And I pray for my colleagues and friends across southern Minnesota who are also called to this kind of work I get to do. We are not alone. So give us all your courage. We thank you for successful surgery for one of our own and for a joyful engagement of another colleague and friend. For many new calls and ordinations happening amongst us we thank you and we praise you, God! We pray for our colleagues in deep grief and or your Holy Spirit to do her thing so that they can do their thing today. Even through grief, especially then. Now give me the courage and stir up my faith to get out of bed/open the car door/enter the church building or the hospital and then to point to you. Amen.

Deep breaths dear pastor, dear deacon, dear chaplain. Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Don’t be afraid. God is with you.