Daily Reading for September 29 • St. Michael and All Angels
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.
Use us to declare your glory, that blind eyes may see,
deaf ears hear, and the cynical be brought to faith.
Spirit of the Living God,
Hear our prayer.
Spirit of truth, we live in a modern Babel
where words are used to conceal meaning rather than make it plain.
Lead the peoples of the world into such a love of truth
that nation may speak with nation,
not seeking to confuse but to understand and to be understood,
whereby trust is created, out of which a truly international community may be born.
Spirit of the Living God,
Hear our prayer.
Creator Spirit, you give to the old the capacity to dream dreams
and to the young to see visions,
but because we exalt ourselves and our desires to the place that is yours alone,
our visions are visions of horror and our dreams nightmares.
Raise up artists and prophets among us
with the will and the ability to inspire and cleanse our society,
to set our hearts aflame and turn our eyes to the heights.
Spirit of the Living God,
Hear our prayer.
Source of all comfort, we pray for the lonely, the sick, the sad, the bereaved,
and all who suffer or are ill at ease….
We claim for them the gift of your peace,
that their troubled hearts may be set at rest and their fears banished.
Spirit of the Living God,
Hear our prayer.
Giver of life, we remember those who have died….
May they enter into the Kingdom where your presence is all in all.
Spirit of the Living God,
Hear our prayer. Amen.
From The Daily Office Revised, in The Wideness of God’s Mercy: Litanies to Enlarge Our Prayer, revised edition, compiled and adapted by Jeffery W. Rowthorn. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org