Prayers of the People - May 28
Resurrection Season - Thursday Evening, May 28
Pause at the end of each day. Enjoy communion with the living God: Creator, Redeemer, Holy Spirit. Listen for the voice of God in the scriptures.
Read
Psalm 47 - God is King over the nations, God sits on the holy throne.
Judges 21 - The people show compassion after swearing to cut off the lineage of Benjamin.
John 21.15-25 - Jesus’ healing work with Peter: “Do you love me? Tend my sheep… follow me”
Meditate
The words of the Lord are spirit and life, a light to the wise path. Sit with your questions, write down your observations and tensions.
Pray
Bring your meditations to this time of prayer and let them guide you, or use the prayer inspired by today’s Psalm, offered here: Lord, hear the prayers of your people.
Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy. For the Lord, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth. He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet. He chose our heritage for us, the pride of our ancestors whom he loves.
To the only wise God, our Savior, who chose our heritage for us, why have you forsaken us? Why, God of Abraham, do we spend our days under the ringing silence of loss and death? George Floyd. Our brother’s last breath cries out from the ground. Breonna Taylor. Our sister’s home invaded. Nina Pop. Your daughter, taken too soon from the life she finally felt free to lead.
God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm.
To the great King over all gods, the One who sings over us, how can we sing Zion songs in a strange land? We’ve hung up our lyres - on the weeping willows surrounding our hush harbors, the only safe space where we steal away each day. Here we will sing and remember, there is no king on this or any stolen land that bid us sing. We sing praises to you, for you, alone.
When you go up with a shout, we will follow. We command the principalities of the earth to bend to goodwill, to renounce oppression and ignorance, to return dignity to the disempowered, and relinquish the supremacy they never owned. We desire your presence among us, Lord. We need your mercy for our people and your might against our foes. Rise up, sleepless judge of the earth- show yourself strong against our anxieties, our strife, our pain.
God is king over the nations; we confess in hope today, that there is no higher power. We fear continued political corruption, oh God rule out the wicked rulers today.
God sits on a holy throne. Will you bring judgment over every unjust judge and jury, police and supremacist threat?
For the shields of the earth belong to God; While the unarmed are attacked by weapons of war, we will not be afraid. We will protest the powers that threaten us and label us a threat. Those who attack the oppressed
God alone is highly exalted. We will remember where authority truly lies. Because our God is exalted, O Lord, will you raise up our people who have been suppressed? Because you are exalted, O God, will you beat back the brutality that seeks to dehumanize us? Because you are exalted, you bring low the wicked and unjust rulers who exalt themselves by subordinating others.
Because you are exalted, O God, you will not fail, you will not delay, and we will not fear, though the earth trembles and the city burns. Because you are exalted, O God, you know our worth above these buildings. You see and seal our sacred life. Deliver us O God.
Rescue us, revive us. Rise up.
Contemplate
In silence
Through Solidarity: Practicing Presence. Today our hearts are with the uprisings in Minneapolis. Where many faith communities are crying over burning buildings and doing little to nothing about brutalized Black bodies. Practice presence and solidarity with the people who are raging against injustice by sitting quietly, giving to the Black Visions Collective, by repeating the phrase “People over property”.
Through song “God Great God” Kurt Carr
Seek God’s face
If you are able, speak this aloud: All shall be Amen and Alleluia. We shall rest and we shall see, We shall see and we shall know. We shall know and we shall love. We shall love and we shall praise. Behold our end which is no end. (Saint Augustine, a North African Bishop who lived from 354-430AD)
Lord, hear the prayers of your people. Amen
Artwork: Stacey Brown’s “The Village”, and “On the Stroll”
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