Monday, November 20, 2006
Thanks
We had a combined service this morning at church. Our traditional, contemporary and Hispanic congregations joined together. I was asked to offer the prayer of thanks.

So here's what we prayed.

Thank you Father.
Thank you for your matchless, holy glory.
Thank you for your reckless grace and ridiculous love for your messy children.
Thank you for calling each one of us by name to this place this morning.
Thank you for the invitation to the Great Banquet at the table of every language and every nation.
Thank you for pursuing us, for rescuing us, for saving us, for knowing us.
Thank you that you are the God who is with us.
Thank you that you are a kind God who will never leave us when we stumble.
Thank you that you are a just God who is never satisfied to watch us stumble.
Thank you that you interfere with our prideful plans.
Thank you that you violently disrupt our common complacency.
Thank you that just as you parted the Red Sea and rescued the children of Israel from Egypt, and just as you rose Jesus from the dead, so you intersect our lives and prove how awesome you are.

Thank you Jesus the Son.
Thank you for showing us what God is like.
Thank you for showing us how to be like God.
Thank you for your broken body that heals our brokenness.
Thank you for your shed blood that covers our sin and transforms the whole world.
Thank you for saving us from our worst selves.
Thank you for saving us from even our best selves.
Because without you, we are nothing.
Thank you that you come to us in the face of vulnerable, impressionable children.
Thank you that you come to us in the face of the hungry and jobless.
Thank you that you come to us in the face of the student miles from home.
Thank you that you come to us in the face of the refugee searching for a new home.

Thank you Holy Spirit.
Thank you for the many gifts you so generously give us that make us one body.
Thank you that you are the gravity that pulls us each to one another.
Thank you that you are substance in the atmosphere that our lungs crave.
Thank you that you are the blood running through our veins that makes us alive.
Thank you that where there is darkness, you are light.
Thank you that where there is sin, you are forgiveness.
Thank you that where there is heartache, you are comfort.
Thank you that where there is loneliness, you are holy presence.
Thank you that where there is disease, you are healing.
Thank you that where there is stress, you are peace.
Thank you that where there is despair, you are hope.
Thank you that where there is hate, you are love.
Thank you for this house that stands here like a lighthouse reminding the neighborhood that the people of Jesus gather here and this is a place of safety, of healing, and of love.

Praise you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.

posted by Peter at 1:18 AM
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