Hump Day Prayer . . . Youth Sunday

This coming Sunday is the Sunday where we hand everything over to the youth. The last time that I helped with a Youth Sunday was my Senior year of high school and I have really loved walking down this road again such a great group of youth. Here is the Prayer for the People that I put together for the service.

Lord God, we come before you this morning with motives mixed, or perhaps with no known motive at all. Yet here in this place - whose very walls are filled with memories - you are with us here and now. We thank you that it is not necessary for us to wait for your presence until we deserve it or until we have banished all other thoughts and considerations from our minds.

Lord, help us to know and understand why we are here. Why our lives really matter? You have placed us on this earth to tend and keep it, we are called to actively participate with you in taking care of the world that we find ourselves in. This world is filled with such beauty and such order and such good, and yet at the same time filled with such heartache and such pain? Give us your grace that we may join together to work for the kingdom that you promise on earth. Let us never rest at peace until hunger, oppression, discrimination, pollution, and war have been banished from our planet. And bless the efforts of those who are working to eradicate these ancient afflict. Unite all persons of goodwill, who perceive your grace in many various ways, as we work together for your world.

We pray for your church-for this congregation that we love, for the denomination of which we are a proud part, and for all who bear your name regardless of what other name they bear. We pray for ourselves: for those of us who are sick and who need your gift of healing, for those who are in despair and who need your gift of comfort; for those who are nearing the end of their life and who need your gift of faith.

Help us here and now, to understand the decisions we make and the life we lead has greater meaning beyond today. To understand why everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do matters. Desperately wanting to understand what significance this minute, this hour, this week, this month, this year has to our lives and to our world. Help us to not just sit back and wait for something to happen or someday to come. Teach us to live lives not for some unknown future but for today. That we may firmly believe and act out our faith, that your will is being done in us and through us. The choices we make now will shape our world and lives for eternity. Because of you, our lives have meaning today and our lives today have meaning forever.

We literally are partners with you, O God, in making this world the kind of place that you originally intended it to be. We are people committed to partnering with you to make this world, the world that we live in, the kind of place that you originally intended it to be. May we be the kind of people who, when we live this way, the very trees of Paradise will be planted. We trust that you will provide that tree whose leaves are the healing for all nations.

In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.