6 Oct 2024 Sunday Prayer for the Pastor, Deacon, Chaplain

Prepare me God,

For whatever is to come today, help me to be in it. Looking for you – searching for you and finding the fingerprints of your grace all over the place. It’s so easy to only see what I’ve made a mess of – my fingerprints smudge up plenty of things I’ve been given to care for. Relationships, faithful leadership, my home, my life. They are all yours first, I know, and yet my grabby hands sometimes act like they’re all mine. And then that’s when a mess happens. And you see it coming all along. And yet. You love me through it. You love me enough to not leave me where you found me. You love me into being. Again.  

So stir up my stagnant heart. Remind me that you have called me into this work, especially when I feel unqualified or unworthy. Especially when I’d just rather not do it. Especially when it all seems just Too Much. Or Not What I Signed Up For. It’s your faithfulness to me that gets me reoriented, or at least breaks into my disoriented reality. You remind me that it’s about you, about love that redefines everything in your time and in an instant. So help me point to you in the midst of the mess that is a life in ministry. And when I bury the lead of your good news or muck it up, I trust in your faithfulness to be alive and well in the most unlikely moments and people. Thank you for being so creative in how you show up. Your love always finds a way.

Help me love well today and be loved well today. Amen.

Dear Pastor. Dear Chaplain. Dear Deacon. You are loved. Breathe in and out knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Don’t be afraid. God is with you.