Prayer for the Week: April 24, 2016

This week we are reminded by the readings from Acts 11:1-18 of God’s incessant call to seek the margins and find blessings in unforeseen places. We read the story of the Holy Spirit coming scandalously to Gentiles and of Peter clearly seeing that God had called “clean” that which he had always reviled. Looking for flowers among the weeds, graces among our rejected ideas, and new life amidst the tombs is both the challenge and the gift of our faith. Here is Rev. Kent’s prayer offered by Carla Gilbert, worship leader.

We in the weeds are so grateful for your irradicable, ever-evolving, flowering of love in our midst. You pour out your spirit on the unexpecting, on the suspicious, the sceptics, the do-gooders, the lay-abouts, the wise, the wealthy, the poor, the foolish, and the weird and a thousand thousand others we weren’t sure were part of your embrace. It is too true that we have been too quick to be too divisive, so we lift our praise for reminding us that we are all part of one creation, and one creator’s love. Therefore, loved in our own particularity, help us us abuse nothing, take nothing as unclean, and act on the fact that all you make is holy, holy, holy. May we hinder no sacred act of love or compassion, lest we hinder the very God of our healing and wholeness.  –Rev. Kent Gilbert