Monday, November 20, 2023

Sunday (Nov. 19) Pastoral Prayer (Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC)


November 19, 2023


O God, thank you for our prayer hymn today, “Now, Thank We All Our God,” and for Rev. Martin Rinkart, who wrote it during the 30 years war, a war in which he conducted several funerals each year including the funeral of his own wife. No wonder he wrote these words about You in verse two, “who keeps us still in grace and guides us when perplexed.”

 

For those times in our lives when we have experienced heartache, grief, and pain, thank you that you are a God who keeps us still in grace and guides us when perplexed. As we near the Thanksgiving holiday, we especially pray for those who are in need of your guiding, caring, forgiving, and healing presence. Be with those who are on our churches’ prayer list and all who are on our hearts and minds this day. 

 

We are grateful for this Sunday of worship in which we thank you with heart, and hands, and voices, and for all the wondrous things you have done. Thank you for our psalmist for today who has reminded us to not only be thankful for past and present blessings, but for those blessing that are to come. 

 

At the end of each day, remind us to recount all of your many blessings that we encountered; like the morning walk with the dogs at the park, the delivery of homemade pumpkin spice bread sent from a sister who lives in Arizona, the completion of a two-month long home improvement project, the garbage company for picking up the trash, being able to complete the sermon, and writing this prayer. Thank you for all of those blessings that I experienced this past Monday. And for the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday blessings as well!

 

No wonder that we are told to pray without ceasing because you never cease offering us your blessings, from the time we wake up and to the time that we go to sleep at night. 

 

Remind dear Marney from the sermon, as well as each one of us this Thursday, to not worry about having a perfect Thanksgiving, but to instead focus on your many blessings, or as Rev. Martin Rinkart likes to call them, “your countless gifts of love.”

 

We pray this with grateful hearts in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray saying… 

 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

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