Last Sunday, I was due to share ‘The Prayers of the People’ during our church service. These are a set of prayers I invite those with us to share with me, they are often about those simple things that really matter in life. More often than not something during my week inspires the prayers I write; an image, a song, a passing comment, a traffic jam. But lately the world has all felt a bit too much. Lockdown, Brexit, US Politics… The Great British Bake Off!
I felt overwhelmed and exhausted and consequently I had nothing. I felt uninspired and had nothing to share.
I work in social care, I support adults with dementia, adults who can not think and communicate like we do, people who cannot speak, cannot hear, cannot see; sometimes all three. And yet God still engages in meaningful prayer with each and everyone of them. Because prayer doesn’t need witty analogies, good syntax or clever words… or any words!
Prayer is just the invitation to come before God, Jesus, Spirit, The Almighty, The Creator, that shared breath in us all. We are invited to come with an open heart and simply be.
Let us pray, let us be.
We take this moment to come before you now, sad and jubilant, peaceful and angry, broken and whole. We lay before you our aches and pains, our fragilities, the creaks and crevices, the places where we feel like we are falling apart at the seams. We come before you now with our hopes and our dreams, our visions and flare, our ideas that we can make this world, that you have called us to be a part of, a better world. We ask you to simply pour out your grace and blessing on it all.
We come before you now with open hearts to simply listen and receive. We can only carry so much, so we place that burden, that which we cling to, before you now at the cross, at your altar. In doing so we create space, space to pick up something new, something truly wonderful from you. Each of us gathered in spirit today knows that which we need to lay down and that which we need to pick up.
For those who have not yet entered in to prayerful conversation with you, we pray for them now.
We are so blessed, heavenly parent, that we can come to you with nothing and receive everything. We thank you for your unending gifts of love, grace and mercy.
Amen.
The Unexpected Prayer 