We are using prayers from the Rev. Ernest Campbell’s collection “Where Cross the Crowded Ways” each week in our Lenten Devotions.
Each week, the prayer for the next Wednesday will appear in the preceding E-pistle; it will also be posted on the church’s Facebook page on Monday or Tuesday before each Wednesday…
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We will use this prayer by the Rev. Ernest Campbell for our Lenten Devotion on Wednesday, March 25 at 7:15 pm in the church’s zoom room. Please join us.
Let wrong embolden us to fight,
And need excite our care;
If not us, who? If not now, when?
If not here, God, then where?
1
Almighty God, Creator of the world in which we live and build; of the church through which we serve, it is good and altogether right, whatever our mood or station, that we should praise your name.
We Thank you for words of encouragement that find us when our flame is low; for helpful hands that reach us when the load is more than we can bear; for retrievable insights that come to mind when two ways open and we must decide. Nor will we fail to thank you for your governance and love, and for all who by word and life and dependence on your Spirit have brought our doubting souls to faith.
We remember with gratitude the pastors, leaders and people of this church who have come before us. The scope of agile minds, discerning hearts, the vision they commanded them, the lives of faith and witness with which they touched others across the years of a long and fruitful ministry.
Help us to continue what they so well began, and to your name be praised. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
2
We remember before you today the laypersons of your church whose witness to you is largely made beyond the church’s walls. We thank you for Christian teachers, Christian lawyers, Christian business leaders; for Christians in politics, Christians in building construction and maintenance, Christians in the arts; and for Christians in the home.
Bless them with a sense of your presence on the job, to the end that they may do their work well, and in the doing of it be as Christ to those around them.
Forgive us that our influence has never matched our numbers; that we have spent more time enjoying our faith than applying it, that so many of our friends have no idea at all of what Christ means to us.
Where others drift, help us to move with purpose;
Where others doubt, help us to believe;
Where others despair, help us to hope in you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
3
O God, searcher of all hearts, in whose sight the fine print of our private history is as a billboard, whatever else we may lack in our worship, let us at least be as honest as we can.
Deliver us from the need to build ourselves up by cutting others down.
Free us from the pride that makes the acknowledgment of wrong difficult.
Give us the grace to back away from earlier positions with the coming of fresh light.
Keep us at peace in the center of our being, however turbulent the causes we support.
Let your comfort enfold every grieving heart among us; the stout promise of your Holy Word embolden all who are afraid; and your Judgment shake the lethargy of all who are at ease in Zion. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
