Prayers

Prayer on Prayer

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Our Ever-Present Refuge & Hiding Place,
we come to you again, today, to worship You
and to seek refuge and to hide from the troubles and worries of life.

O Great God, as we pray this morning,
we are mindful of our need to pray
in order to grow in our relationship with You.
Yet, we have difficulty with our prayer life.
How should we pray?
Is there a book that will tell us how to pray?
How will we know we are saying the right words to You?
How will we know that You, O God, are happy with our prayers?

O Lord, calm us in our anxieties.
Remind us that prayer is a dialogue with you.
Remind us that our prayers are just communicating with You
as we would a beloved friend or a loving parent.
Help us to be so close to you that we are not afraid to say anything to You
just as we are not afraid to say anything to our closest friends –
even if we are mad, sad, confused, or excited – just as the writers of the Psalms often did.

Yet, O Ground of our Being, calm us and slow us down more to remind us that
prayer is dialogue between two parties.
Help us to listen to You, as well.
Remind us that our communication is a two way street.
Lord, You are ALWAYS with us, no matter what.
Help us to see, then, that You are always trying to speak to us.
May we hear You in people that we speak with.
May we hear You in the people that we help.
May we hear You as we read our Bibles and other writings as well.
May we hear You in the music we listen to and the music we sing.
May we hear You in the beauty of nature.
May we hear You in the routine of life.
Help us, O Lord, to take the time to listen.
Help us, O God, to listen with great expectancy
for what You have to say to us.
Amen.

An Advent Prayer – Expectations

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O God, Christmas is right around the corner,
and we are full of expectations.
What will happen in worship?
Will my prayer get answered?
What will happen at such-and-such party?
What will we get so-and-so for Christmas?
What will WE get for Christmas?
Will the answer to these questions meet our expectations?

O Lord, in centuries past,
people were expecting a messiah,
and there were expectations
about what that messiah would be like.
Is it interesting that Jesus did not fit these expectations?

God, as our story in Luke goes,
he was born to parents who were peasants.
He was born in a stable and laid in a manger.
There must have been the smells
of hay, animal dander, and even manure there.
Was that a place fit for a king?
The lowest of low – shepherds – were his first visitors.

He didn’t come starting a revolution,
but brought good news to the poor.
He proclaimed release of captives and
recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.
He preached the year of your favor, O God, to the least of these.
He did not amass a great army
but gathered together a rag-tag group of twelve
and some women to support them.
He didn’t come catering to the rich and famous
but to the poor, disenfranchised, and sick
all the while calling on the rich and famous to take care of them, too.
And yet, many of us call this one
who did not meet expectations, “Messiah.”

As we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ at Christmas, O Lord,
help us to consider what this might mean for our expectations.
Let us not forget that in the story of creation,
You didn’t say everything was perfect, only, “Very good.”

Amen.

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The above prayer is a response to the great discussion we had at the 2nd Session of the 2011 Advent Study,
Christmas is Not Your Birthday,
inspired by the book of the same name.

This prayer was prayed at First United Methodist Church in Wichita Falls on Sunday, December 11, 2011.