Prayer for the Day
A prayer for encouragement
Come, Holy Spirit. Come near to us and bless our prayer. Refresh, renew and fill us that we might receive our calling anew. Teach us patience that we might reflect your patient love as we seek to sing a new song so that in all things we might give glory to God, through Christ and in the power of the Spirit. Encourage us and fill us with hope for the future that with warmed hearts, fresh harmonies and renewed hands and voices we might pour ourselves out in love for others as you have poured out your love for us in Christ. Come, Holy Spirit. Come, Lord, come.
Alternative Prayer for the Day
A prayer commending all to God
We commend to you, O Lord, our waking and our sleeping, our going out and our coming in, our souls and our bodies, our words and our deeds, our life and our death, our household and our companions, our world and our neighbours.
A prayer that we might be instruments of God's praise
Ow, Fadda! Eternal Creator, the story of our relationship as revealed in Scripture with you begins with a hymn; a hymn of creation. Thank you for the reminder that chaos and darkness give way to order and beauty.
Thank you, God, that the rhythms of music are written deep in our spirits. Yet because “guilty feet have got no rhythm” we too often feel like we might never dance again the way we danced with you. We come to you now in the language of one prison programme, Changing Tunes, asking you to change, to shift the narrative of hopelessness often running around in our head.
Make us once again instruments of praise; instruments of worship! Retune us, glue our cracked pots with gold like in Kintsugi master craft; make us more valuable than we recognise. Although we may feel fit for the rubbish pile, you see us. You greet us – sawbona! You see… our past, our heritage, our people and you smile. Sit with us as we learn to sing again, show us how to sing in harmony with you. Nature’s harmony. Yes, Fadda. Amen.
Leon Dundas, Managing Chaplain at HMP Exeter
Wednesday 08 September 2010
"For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." (v.44-45)
Luke 1:39-47