Prayer

 

What are you holding onto this morning from this past week (or even past year)?  Where do you feel the tension in your body?  Maybe in your shoulders or your mind spinning like a hamster on a wheel or in your gut that is doing summersaults.  What thoughts are stirring and swirling within you this week?  What storms came out of nowhere in the last few days?  Where did you find peace and where was shalom (integration of head, heart, soul, body and community) elusive or felt like you were nailing Jello to the wall (which why would anyone do that to perfectly good Jello?!?).  So, for you my beloved, a blessing:

 

God of journeys that we know like the back of our hand to the stable, but this year (and every year) is different, meet us in the messy manger moments of our one wild and precious life.  God of moments when we can breathe, center us.  

God of long lists of where we long for peace/reconciliation/repair/renewal of our lives, help us continue to offer You the people and places and parts of ourselves that need Your healing shalom. 

God, we don’t always know what we are waiting for…or our thoughts can be jumbled, or we worry that if we start listing all that is within us we will look greedy. 

Help us be honest, open, willing to You, O God. 

Knitting Seamstress God, You continue to weave us into a garment with all Your creation, yet there are threads that threaten to be snag and unravel the whole sweater.  Continue to repair and renew us, we pray.  God of silence, Shalom, storms that all mix and mingle together that is the recipe card of life, go before us, beside us, behind us, and befriend us this day.  May the hope and peace of Advent burn brightly guiding our way and be lit anew in our hearts for every day in 2025.  In the name of the One who is Your love in the flesh, Jesus the Christ. Amen.  Blessed are you, Pilgrim People, as we trudge toward Bethlehem this year.