March 12, 2023

Offered by Rocky Supinger, Associate Pastor

Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, may the heavens be joyful and the earth be glad! For your name is majestic and your glory is set for all to see in the works you have made. Amid them all are your people, the people of your very own creation, of whom the psalmist reminds us you are mindful and for whom you care. And so we are grateful, and our gratitude issues in praise and blessing, for if we remain silent, Jesus tells us, even the rocks will cry out.

Today we bring prayers, intercessions, and appeals to your mindfulness and your care. For those in our world who face suffering of all kinds today, both the intimate suffering of illness, decline, death, loss, and grief, as well as the collective suffering of peoples assailed by the elements as well as by the forces of nations, banks, and militaries.

We entrust all who suffer to your care, and in so doing we pray for the will and the commitment to relieve suffering wherever we see it, through acts of giving and advocating as well as through acts of witnessing and listening.

God, be mindful as well of the city of Chicago, our church home. As we approach a mayoral election, may our city’s people and institutions be led by a vision of human flourishing in this place, a vision in which public safety and dignity for all are not opposed to one another; a vision of children as a people’s most critical resource; a vision of opportunity that invests in our common life more than it takes from it. May your care be upon all of the places where we live and work and go to school and rest, so that these would be places where all people thrive as you created humanity to thrive.

Hear our prayers today for the very creation you have made, O God: its waters, its soil, its skies. As we grow ever more mindful of how our way of living in your creation is effecting changes on it, including an altered climate that is producing extreme weather that threatens the lives of entire communities, we pray that your Spirit would hover above your creation as in the beginning, to bring order and health out of chaos and degradation. Inspire and animate us — as part of your creation — to be better stewards of its precious gifts as individual people and — more importantly — as collective actors in business and government, so that the creation might be healed for the sake of this and future generations.

Hear our prayer for your care of your church, O God, this congregation of Fourth Presbyterian Church and all churches everywhere today. Jesus, our Head, welcomes us to a kind of abiding together as your people, gathered by you for worship and growth in faith and care for our neighbors; so abide with us as we abide in the world that our neighbors and our pew-mates and all who are gathered under the banner of “church” would know your presence in our lives as much and as well as we know anything. Strengthen our witness to the good news of your gracious welcome to all. Make us bold to follow you in the way of Jesus — joyful, humbly — into the future you have for us.

Our Father …

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church