Prayer

 

God of stories that wrap around us, sometimes blessing and other times binding us, sing to our lives with Your liberating love.  We hear how You long for us to sense Your presence in ways that fill us with peace.  And we know that this isn’t always our experience every minute of every day.  When the strings of someone’s story hurt or harm us; when we are pulled in a direction we’d rather not go; when we feel confined by someone else’s words, help us.  Remind us that You are writing upon our lives at this very moment a melody of hope, peace, faith, joy, and love.  Remind us that You long for a world of peace, shalom, not simply an absence of violence and death ~ but thriving/flourishing.  Remind us that You number our days, and invite us to reflect on Your goodness and grace, which can be crowded out by other voices that want us to buy now because supplies are limited.  Let Your limitless, unknowable Presence loose in our lives in these July days.  In the name of the One who was born in a barn, walked on water, was transformed on a mountain, died on a cross, and came back with the wounds of the world to show us Your “Yes!” to life and love, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.