Harvest time is the ideal moment to reflect on the gifts, skills, passions, hobbies, strengths and talents God has lovingly bestowed on us.
We are not alone, when we come together through the power of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing we cannot achieve in God’s name.
So how have you used your gifts this week, where have you used your talents, who has benefited from your strengths and skills?
Where have you acted?
Where have you not?
Let us take a moment just to consider the week, the seven days gone, the 168 hours that were available to us. Where did you act, how did you use your skills to better your community, when did you share your passion with someone else?
Whose life has been enriched through your strengths and gifts?
When did you not act, when did you listen to God’s voice and respond to that calling to create space for others to act, when did the holy spirit ask you to not intervene so that others could learn and grow?
When should you have acted, shared, moved, but didn’t because you were scared or unsure… or couldn’t be bothered.
What opportunities did you miss this week?
Let us go to God in prayer.
Holy Spirit thank you for bestowing on a veritable feast of gifts, strengths and skills. We thank you for our hobbies, passions and crafts. We thank you that we all have something to share from beautiful artistic gifts, complex surgical skills to the most soul warming smile. We thank you that this week you did indeed empower us. You did indeed guide us and you did indeed call us to be your feet and your hands and your eyes and your voice. And when we said yes, it made a difference.
We pray for that one amongst who struggles to think how they made a difference this week. Remind each of us that we cannot know the outcome of every action, of every word, of every gesture. We simply go out in the world and act in love and in faith.
The simplest of conversation may have been a turning point for someone. Someone may have been about to experience the final straw and then we let them in the queue, we shared a smile, we made them feel human and worth something.
Remind us daily that even the smallest act can have life changing consequences for someone. Nothing is to big for us to achieve, noting is to small that it is not worth doing.
Holy Spirit thank you for being there to nurture and guide us. Thank you for giving us wisdom and patience. Often, we go to step in, to take over, to do for, and in doing so we accidentally disempower another, we take away their journey, their learning, their achievement.
We will turn to you daily, Holy Spirit, to seek that wisdom, that learning, that intuition.
Jesus, you knew when and where to speak, when and where to be obvious and direct.
You knew when and where to hold back, to share only what was needed. You knew when to step in and when to step back.
May we learn from you as we walk through this week.
Heavenly Parent we ask for your blessing on all those we came in contact this week and we ask especially for your loving and healing touch to be upon those people we failed to support.
For those people who could have benefited from our skills talents and gifts, but were left hungry because we did not share, be with them now.
We place ourselves before you now and ask that you give us the strength and courage that next week we do better.
We will not dash past those in need to rush to our next appointment, we will stop and lend a hand or word of support and advice. We will carve out time to sit and chat with those who are lonely, and in doing so share our passions and hobbies and find new things in common, new connections
Remind us that we do not do these things alone, we don’t have to work it all out ourselves. You are there to prompt us and celebrate with us when we get it right.
And you will comfort us when we get it wrong.
Proverbs 3:5 tells us: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
Holy Spirit, create in us a sense of always wanting to be present in the world and be a sharing community. May we become a community and world, where we reflect daily on what we did and did not and ask you to help us learn. May we always do our best and always want to do better, in your name…
Amen
The Unexpected Prayer 