written by the Rev. Dr. Dawna Wall
Holy and gracious God, we offer our thanks for the gifts you entrust to us – and pray that you would help us to be grounded in your love, our hearts and hands open to the treasure of holiness that flows through all creation. Give us courage to open ourselves anew to the sacred opportunity of sharing in the cycle of renewal and rebirth. As you restore balance in us, help us to restore balance in our living.
We offer our sorrow for the times we have closed ourselves off to your presence. We offer the grief we bear for the ways we have not seen your holy image in ourselves and in one another. We offer our mourning for the times we have negated that worth, despised our gifts and envied those of another. Receive our sorrow, our grief and our mourning, that they too, may be transformed in beauty. As you restore balance in us, help us to restore balance in our living.
We offer our fears, our lack of trust and our anxiety about resources, help us to see the grain of wheat, the mustard seed, the widow’s mite, and to embrace these stories as we encounter them. Multiply your peace and grace and helps us scatter your seeds of goodness with abandon and joy. As you restore balance in us, help us to restore balance in our living.
We offer the tender shoots of new growth, and ask that your Spirit nurture them and safeguard those places where you are doing something new. We offer the ancient growth that informs and shapes the nascent, and gives itself completely for that which is to come. We offer the vulnerability of the places we have been wounded and the courageous healing that wraps around us; where there are scars and sensitivity, help us approach one another with care. As you restore balance in us, help us to restore balance in our living.
We offer our wonder that the Maker of the universe knows us by name and calls us to share in this generative, lifegiving work. Pour out your Spirit on us, like irrigation, like spring rain that all your gifts my flourish in our work and our witness. Amen.