(I promised I would inflict more prayers on you, so here is one. The sermon was given by a friend who has a deep love of ecological theologies, so I was going for a nature-y theme…)
God of growth and change, of death and life
We feel like a withered people
Dry as husks, brittle as old bones
We rasp when we move
And everywhere we shed dust.
We want to live without soil
No roots to hold us still and feed us.
We want to live without water
To trust only in ourselves for life.
We want to live without sunlight
To never be revealed to others, to never see clearly who we truly are.
And so – we wither.
We become dust too quickly.
We die on the vine.
If God is love, and if we belong to God, then we must live a new way
A way that says “there is enough”
Enough soil, enough water, enough light.
Enough to flourish. Enough to share.
(And then the Benediction that I wrote but didn’t give because our guest had one of her own…)
Sink you roots deep in the rich soil of the present Spirit
Drink deeply of th water of love that Christ pours out
Stand tall in the light of God which illumines the world
And you will grow strong
You will flourish together
And you will bear life-giving fruit
And all of God’s people say
Allelujah!
Amen
>unfinished 
Please consider publishing your prayers (in print, not just on the web). When the well runs dry and inspiration is gone, we worship leaders need words like these to share in worship.
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Anon:Right now the plan is for me to collect these Pastoral Prayers and to give them as a gift to my internship church for whoever comes after me. I am also very interested in publishing them in some free format (well, free for others and cheap for me to produce) for whoever is interested. Right now, they’re on the blog because it costs nothing but a little time. In the future, once I have them collected and typed up for the church, I’d be happy to find some way to make them available more widely.
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Beautiful. I love the benediction. Can I steal it?
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Absolutely. Steal whatever you want from this blog. Anything helpful, its yours.
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I used your Great Prayer of Thanksgiving yesterday and it went over very well. I got two positive comments about it afterward from parishioners.I agree with Tribal Church, the benediction here is lovely.
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