[A member of the Korean UMC offered greetings at both of our worship services. They are celebrating their 30th anniversary as a congregation. They use our building for worship, prayer, bible study and fellowship and recently held a 3-day homecoming gathering in celebration of their anniversary. We enjoy our partnership with them! The pastoral prayer includes a recognition of our shared ministry with the Korean UMC. The prayer also mentions the tragic back to back mass shootings that occurred over the weekend in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. For the sermon on “License Plate Sightings: ENUF,” click here.]
O God, our prayer is exactly what we expressed just now in our hymn – “Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold. Take my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose.”
Instead of building bigger barns O God, teach us how to build bigger hearts where we share your gifts with others and where we participate in the building of your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Thank you, O God for big hearts that share your love with others. Like a family in our church who invited their Sunday School class members to their home this past week for a time of fellowship and sharing. Like one of our shut-ins who cannot attend church on Sundays, but is more than willing to sew festival of sharing bags in her home. Like a bunch of Methodists gathering yesterday morning to arrange flowers to give to residents of Lindley Inn. Like a Korean congregation celebrating 30 years of sharing your love with others here in our church. Thank you for all of these big hearts that share your many blessings with others, O God.
O God, teach us what it means to not store up treasures for ourselves, but to be rich toward you.
Gracious God, as we prepare to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion, may the bread and the cup remind us of your big heart for the world; a world that is filled with so much violence, racism, division, fear, hopelessness, and inequity, a world that in just a matter of hours yesterday and earlier this morning, can have one mass shooting in El Paso, Texas and another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio. Our prayers are with the families of the 29 people who were killed in those two separate shootings, O God.
We long for a world that instead of hate, is filled with love and instead of fear, is filled with peace, the way you always intended it to be.
We pray this in the name of Jesus who taught us to ask, seek, and knock and the door will be opened unto us. Open the door of peace in our violent world even as we pray together…
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
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