Hedge up my way with thorns,
that I find not the path for following vanity.
Hold thou me in with bit and bridle,
lest I fall from thee.
O Lord, compel me to come in to thee.
Lord, shall we not bring these gifts to Your Service?
Shall we not bring to Your service all our powers
For life, for dignity, grace and order,
And intellectual pleasures of the senses?
Spirit of power, we find it hard to come together in the Church,
even within a single congregation.
How shall we learn to be one family, loving and serving the whole of humankind?
Lead us into such unity of purpose that we may receive power:
not the power to threaten or destroy, but the power to restore waste places.
Lord Jesus, in a dark hour you spoke of the gift of peace;
we beg that gift for ourselves,
that we may have the inner serenity that cannot be taken from us.
Then we may be messengers of your peace to a strife-torn world.
Give peace in our time, Lord.
Help us to live in peace.
Lord, we often fold our hands in prayer,
when we should really jump for joy
because you come to us as rescuer, as Savior,
cleaning up the mess we make of our lives,
putting together what we pull apart.
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord.
Rejoice, my spirit, in God my Savior.
Lord Jesus, you have faced temptation,
you know how difficult it can be to distinguish
between vision and mirage, between truth and falsehood.
Lord, help us when we are tempted:
And save us when we fall.
We pray for the Church,
where all too often, like Cain,
we have made the worship offered by our brother a cause for hostility and division.
We pray that our Lord may bind us together,
teaching us to value the richness of our diversity
and to rejoice in every fresh glimpse of God’s glory
seen through traditions other than our own.
Almighty Father, you give us life
as you give life to all people.
You call us into the Church
that with men and women
of different races, colors, and languages,
different experiences and different traditions,
we may be one body
to the glory of Christ on earth.
Crucified and risen Lord, we pray for the Church.
Save us from dawdling by an empty tomb.
Save us from bondage to the past.
Save us from the hypnotic fascination of decay and death
and make your Church to know your resurrection life.
May we follow where you lead and live for you in today’s world.
The Lord is risen.
He is risen indeed.
Let me define what I mean by famine. Famine is the reigning myth. It is king and queen, emperor and president. As the kids would say, “It rules.” Myth one is that there is not enough. You will barely get through an hour anywhere in the first-world without the subtext of “there is not enough” coming up. “I would love to come but I am so busy.”