A Thou Who Hears!

We prefer our worship of you should be upbeat.

We like it that the church is “the happiest place in town.”

We take our glimpse of your promised kingdom as a venue,

where never is heard a discouraging word!

But then . . . reality!!

like suffering and death, like pandemic and virus, like loss unimaginable!

That reality breaks our happy illusion

of a fairy-tale life in the first world,

and we are left with stone-cold fear and bottomless need.

So we cry out with urgent imperative:

Hear, help, save!!

Lord hear us LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER

We cry out along with the whole company of people of faith

who have cried out.

We cry out, because our cry,

since the lips of the slaves in Egypt,

is our most elemental word back to you, our creator.

We cry out, not in despair,

but in confidence that you hear.

You are the one, the only one,

who can turn sorrow to joy, mourning to dancing, weeping to laughter.

Lord hear us LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER

So now, God who hears, helps, and saves,

hear, act, and make new!

Give us courage and patience;

end the virus;

let us be rich in soul and poor in things,

ordered for neighborliness, generous with goods, free of fear,

but mostly: end the virus!

Lord hear us LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER

We pray this in the name of Jesus

who defeated the powers of death

overcame the forces of evil,

ended the unbearable vexation of leprosy for some,

and became the Lord of the Dance,

the dance of wellbeing, gladness, and peace.

So we pray, so we trust, so we hope . . . in you!

Lord hear us LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER   AMEN