Category: prayer

New memories


 

A litany: Resurrection light

Risen Christ, when darkness overwhelms us
may your dawn beckon.

When fear paralyses us
may your touch release us.

When grief torments us
may your peace enfold us.

When memories haunt us
may your presence heal us.

When justice fails us
may your anger ignite us.

When apathy stagnates us
may your challenge renew us.

When courage leaves us
may your spirit inspire us.

When despair grips us
may your hope restore us.

And when death threatens us
may your resurrection light lead us. Amen.

 
— written by Annabel Shilson-Thomas, and posted on www.cafod.org.uk

From the blog
A taste for beauty
3 Prayers for endings and beginnings
Consolation joy
 

Create a memory (game)

 

World Collage Day 2025 is this Saturday, 10 May.

I’m hoping (and praying) there’s a good turn out at our COME COLLAGE ROTTERDAM event. We will be creating mini collages in matching pairs, based on a series of prompts, to form a memory game.

World Collage Day is for everyone. There might be a World Collage Day event near you. Alternatively, set up an impromptu World Collage Day get-together where you are, with friends, family, people from your church or neighbourhood. It’s a great way to get creative and build community across the generations. You don’t need much: a place, a time, scissors, glue sticks, magazines and junk mail, and some cardboard you can cut to size to use as a base. Simple, fun and often profound.
 
For more information: kolajinstitute.org/worldcollageday/

Easter Prayer

You have made known to me the ways of life;
you will make me full of gladness with your presence.
(Acts 2:28)

Risen Lord Jesus,
as the rising sun scatters the darkness,
let fear and the memory of failure
be scattered from our souls
that we may live in the glorious freedom
of the children of God

We raise up into your resurrection light
all who are excluded from fullness of life
by poverty, unemployment or stigma,
by injustice, criminality or neglect,
by homelessness, landlessness or war,
remembering in particular the peoples of
[names may be added here]

Risen Lord Jesus,
let us be baptized by your resurrection light.
May we trust in you above all else,
hope in you above all else,
seek you in all things,
find you in every place,
meet you among all people,
know you through everything,
and love you
beyond, beyond, beyond all telling.

We pray in your name, living Lord.
Amen.

 
~ from the Christian Aid website. posted on re:worship
 

Higher – this is why

 
Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be.

For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man.

And, having become man, he humbled himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal.

That is why God has now lifted him so high, and has given him the name beyond all names, so that at the name of Jesus “every knee shall bow”, whether in Heaven or earth or under the earth.

And that is why, in the end, “every tongue shall confess” that Jesus Christ” is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
 

Philippians 2:5-11  (J.B. Phillips New Testament)

 

A prayer

Most wonderful God,
the beauty we see in Jesus
is your beauty veiled in human flesh,
the love we witness from Bethlehem to Golgotha
is your love contracted to a span.
If Christ’s life is so holy as to fill us with wonder,
how much more would your unveiled beauty
leave us overwhelmed and trembling?
You are more than the eye could bear,
more than the mind can ever fathom.

Yet you have so carefully made us
that although we cannot fathom you,
we can yet love you.
Gratefully we bring our little lives to you,
asking that our worship may arise from love and be shaped by love,
and be directed towards that larger loving which is our soul’s desire.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen!

 
~ by Bruce Prewer, posted on his website
 

Go where it is deeper

 
When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.”

“Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.”

 

Prayer to the Spirit

Spirit of life
Fill our emptiness with your fullness

Spirit of power
Stir our hearts afresh

Spirit of love
Touch us, and through us, our neighbour

Spirit of creativity
Enable and empower the gifts you have given

Spirit of eternity
Draw us ever deeper into your Kingdom

 
— by John Birch, posted on re:worship

From the blog
The empty cup
Mightier than the crashing waves
In the school of prayer with Tish Harrison Warren
 

Deep calls to deep


Caution: Wet floor   (Verbeke Foundation, Belgium)
 

In my local congregation in Rotterdam we’re doing a sermon series called “Deep calls to deep”, starting on Lent 2 and running through to Good Friday and Easter.

The series includes Psalm 42, Hannah “deeply troubled” (1 Samuel 1:1-20), “deep darkness” from Isaiah 59, Jonah’s prayer “from deep in the realm of the dead” (Jonah 2:1-10), Jesus “deeply distressed” in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-42), Peter’s advice to “love each other deeply” (1 Peter 4:7-11) and Paul commending the Thessalonians for their “deep conviction” (1 Thess 1:1-10).

What deep treasures will you discover this Lent?

Ash Wednesday prayer

Our ancestors in the faith
used ashes as a sign of our repentance,
a symbol of the uncertainty and fragility
of human life.
Like them,
we have tasted the ashes of hopelessness;
we have walked through the ashes
of our loss and pain;
we have stood knee-deep
in the ashes of our brokenness.

God of our lives,
out of the dust of creation
you have formed us and given us life.
May these ashes not only be a sign
of our repentance and death,
but reminders that by your gift of grace
in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer,
we are granted life forever with you.
Amen.

(A period of silence will follow. Those who wish to do so, may come forward to have the sign of the cross placed on their foreheads or hands. The ashes are from palm branches used at Palm Sunday services in the past, mixed with oil).

~ written by Thom Shuman, posted on re:worship
 

Trees of healing


 

I saw a tree that was growing on each side of the river. It is the tree that gives people true life. It has 12 different kinds of fruit, a new fruit every month. The tree’s leaves are like medicine. They make people of every nation well again.

A prayer for wholeness

We grieve and confess
that we hurt and have been hurt,
to the third and fourth generations,
that we are so afraid of pain
that we shield ourselves from being vulnerable to others,
and refuse to be open and trusting as a child …

O God of Wholeness, we rest in you …
You listen with us to the sound of running water,
you sit with us under the shade of the trees of our healing,
you walk once more with us in the garden in the cool of the day,
the oil of your anointing penetrates the cells of our being,
the warmth of your hands steadies us and gives us courage.
O God of Wholeness, we rest in you …

 
by Jim Cotter
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #349

From the blog
Settle yourself into the quiet
In the school of prayer with Terry Hinks
Theme: He heals the brokenhearted  [prayer sheet]
 

To love as Jesus loved


 

Opening prayer

O God,
you broke down the barriers when you crept in beside us.
In Jesus, your hands touched all, and touched us.
You opened our eyes
to see how the hands of the rich were empty,
and the hearts of the poor were full.
You took the widow’s mite and the child’s loaves
and used them to show us the Kingdom.

Here in the company of the neighbour whom we know
and the stranger in our midst,
and the self from whom we turn,
we ask to love as Jesus loved.

Make this the place and time, good Lord,
when heaven and earth become one,
and we in word and flesh
know ourselves beloved.
Amen.

 
~ from the website of Old South Church in Boston, posted on re:worship

From the blog
3 prayers for the New Year
Table grace
Germinate and grow
 

Deeply loved

 

Litany

(inspired by 1 John 4:19, John 15:12)

How deeply you have loved us, Jesus;
how willingly you stepped into our experience,
how completely you empathised with all that we endure.
Teach us to love as you have loved us.

How sacrificially you have loved us, Jesus;
how completely you gave yourself for us,
how courageously you suffered for our sakes.
Teach us to love as you have loved us.

How restoratively you have loved us, Jesus;
how generously you share your life,
how extravagantly you make yourself available to us.
Teach us to love as you have loved us.

We praise you for your love
which is given so freely and so unconditionally.
And we thank you for believing
that we could learn to offer such love
to each other.
Amen.
 

— written by John van de Laar, posted on Sacredise

From the blog
All my days and forever
In small ways
Theme: Good shepherd  [prayer sheet]
 

A taste of autumn


 

A generous harvest

inspired by 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

God, source of all life,
the northern autumn is all around us now, beautiful
in scarlet and gold.
We have heard the Spirit of God in the rustling
leaves and the rush of water,
and we are so grateful for a generous harvest,
for seeds of many kinds, sown and multiplied,
for the sufficiency we enjoy.

Sung (Taizé):
Bless the Lord, my soul
and bless God’s holy name.
Bless the Lord, my soul,
who leads us into life.

Creator God,
we are so grateful for the creation which nourishes
and sustains all that lives.
Renew in us the sense of its value
that we may not squander its riches,
or so bend it to our will that we find we have
destroyed it.

Bless the Lord …

Transforming God,
we cannot sow our seed with clenched fists.
Help us to open our hands, to let go of grasping,
that we too may scatter with hope and generosity
our seeds of justice, peace and joy.
So may the fruits of our harvest
be for the sharing of the earth
and the blessing of your love.
Amen

 
— written by Peggy M De Cuehlo, posted on re:worship

COMING VERY SOON

“Hope for today: Daily reflections for Advent”
A collaboration between Irene, Rev. Graham Austin and Irma Gevers of Scots International Church Rotterdam, with daily posts from 1 to 24 December.