Seeking a New Way

Leader
Blessed God, you have made us in your image and filled us with every grace and blessing.

All
We pray today for clarity of vision as we seek new ways to proclaim your peace and justice. Rouse our human appetite to hunger for the new life you are constantly creating in us. Help us to give witness to your will that we may boldly proclaim a new day of justice for all people.

PRAYER RESPONSE
(Please alternate stanzas.)

O God of beginnings, as your Spirit moved over
the face of the deep on the first day of creation,
move with me now, in my time of beginnings,
when the air is rain-washed, the bloom is on the
bush, and the world seems fresh and full of
possibilities, and I feel ready and full.

I tremble on the edge of a maybe,
a first time, a new thing, a tentative start,
and the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips.

In silence, Lord, I share now my eagerness
and my uneasiness about this something different
I would be or do.

And I listen for your leading to help me
separate the light from the darkness
in the change I seek to shape
and which is shaping me. Amen

—Excerpted from Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle. Ted Loder, copyright 1984.