Prayers of the People - May 31
Pentecost Sunday
May 31st, Anniversary of Black Wall Street. Pause to give thanks and praise God for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Prepare your heart to celebrate the season of the Spirit’s moving mightily. Listen to the voice of God in the scriptures.
Read
Psalm 104 - God the Creator and Provider
Numbers 11 - Moses Establishing Elders
Acts 2.1-21 - The Coming of the Holy Spirit
1 Corinthians 12.3-12 - One Body, Many Members
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 we’ve offered here: Lord, hear the prayers of your people.
On this day of Pentecost, O God, we fall down at the foot of your throne and ask that your Spirit would fall upon us once again. We feel fire within us, a burning for your truth to set free every captive body and mind. We need to be reminded of the power of the Holy Spirit. Send your anointing today, send it right away. Show yourself as ever present among us.
And I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
We lift up leaders and organizers who simply cannot go another further. They are deeply pained by trauma and drama, still pressed to save and stabilize in spaces that they have not built. We were not made to carry the weight of the world. We were not fashioned as beasts of burden, yet we are called on the save the day everyday, with no remembrance of our humanity. We need a divine intervention, we need your tireless work to carry on so that we can make some attempt at much needed rest.
I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.
We lift up all of the uprisers who are participating in revolution in different ways, with different tactics, with one unified goal. Make us one, Lord. Please send the same Spirit, from the same God, so that we will work together with the same intention - to bring abundant life to our people, your children. We know that you can do it, oh God of the People, God of the People’s Power. We know that you can do it, and we need you to do it right now, Lord. Today.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.
God of Growth and Renewal, set your Spirit on us like cloven tongues of fire. Send a mighty rushing wind to show yourself strong all around us, and within us. And make our paths plain. Disrupt the infiltrators marching beside us and plotting against us. Rebuke the enemies of liberation with your thundering sound, cause them to flee. Give us an inheritance in your victory.
Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, you set the beams of your chambers on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.
Contemplate
In silence
Through song: Holy Spirit Fiya https://youtu.be/s2xqKazHyMU
In Black History: Ninety-nine years ago on May 31, 1921, a white supremacist mob burned down “Black Wall Street,” a prosperous neighborhood of Black-owned businesses, churches and homes in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Racially charged allegations of a young African-American man assaulting a young white woman combined with ongoing resentment of Black success ignited a White mob to kill hundreds of Black Tulsans and destroy acres of their property. It was one of the worst racial terror massacres in American history; resulting in the mass exodus of thousands of Black Tulsans. Its aftereffects still deeply impact the city.
Seek God’s face
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Spirit; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Lord, hear the prayers of your people. Amen
Artwork: Construction site in Minneapolis, Social Media post, photographer unknown // Nico Phooko, Songs of Old
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