leadinginworship

All I Want for Christmas: A Prayer List as I Go to the Mall

This Christmas I would like…

the clear conviction

that beauty is for beholding

and that I don’t have to own

everything that gives me pleasure.

I want to have joy in gift-giving,

seeking to delight those I love.

I would like protection from over purchasing:

and reminders that more gifts

don’t always bring more delight.

I would like contentment this year,

and freedom from envy as I look at things

that I cannot afford to buy.

I would like mindfulness for Christmas,

so that as I shop I can be present to those I meet.

In busy, bustling, boisterous aisles,

I want the ability to touch people gently

with my eyes, not my elbows.

Please give me kind words

to share with store employees

who are often overworked and underpaid.

I would like lots of perspective this year,

to know how fortunate I am,

and also heaps of mercy for those who are less fortunate.

If it’s not too much trouble,

can you give me a sign, maybe a star, this year

that would orient me to the search I’m really on,

the search for a treasure,

something for a wise woman to carry

as she journeys to the birth

of a newborn Saviour.

Design conscious: a prayer about our clothes

Consider the clothes of our congregation,
how they glow!
Clothes of every color, light and dark, bright and muted,
a rainbow of raiment as varied as the lilies of the field.
Thank you, Lord, for clothing us;
we all have something to wear.
This despite the fact
that some of us have stood at our closets
lamenting, “I have nothing to wear.”

We come to worship with expensive Italian shoes
and twenty-year-old Birkenstocks
and running shoes from the thrift store.
We come to church with ironed pants,
skirts and dresses, short and long;
we even come with holey jeans. 
Few of us toil and spin to make our clothes,
and we confess, Lord, that we give hardly a thought
to those who clothe us with their labor.
In a world where disconnection breeds contempt,
where ignorance leads to neglect,
and apathy can mean the difference between life and death,
clothe us, Lord, with wisdom.
Show us the connections between:
what we wear and what we believe,
who we are and who we affect,
how we love and how we spend our money.
Help us to read the labels and to know our origins.
You are our Designer, we are fashioned by you.
Your garment of love, tailor-made,
a design lovely in every season.

Climbing the More with Less Ladder

The effort to achieve goodness
stretches the most ambitious soul.
Faced with global warming,
the oil crisis and rampant materialism,
we can and do rise to the occasion.
We track our miles and kilometers
for every carbon footprint,
we pinch pennies,
we recycle and re-use,
we evaluate and re-evaluate
our time-saving, time-treasuring,
simple-life strategies.

Having scrambled our way up this hill of beans
we modestly pride ourselves in knowing a thing or two.
We shake our heads and exchange knowing looks
about all those prodigal sons and daughters
with their wasteful wanton ways.
We dispense tips, constructively,
to all who may not be as high up
on the more-with-less ladder.

News of the feast hits us like a wall . . .
extravagant lavishness,
over-the-top hospitality.
Our eyes wide as platters we exclaim,
“That fatted calf could have been sold
and the money given to the poor!
Don’t get me started on the gold rings!”
As the unsimple are welcomed into the kingdom,
our father pulls out a chair for us at the feasting table,
asking, with a smile, “Are you ready for grace?”

Spring Cleaning Prayer of Confession

Here’s a prayer for the corners of our lives
messy with yesterday’s business.
There’s the guilt about what was thrown in the garbage,
the regret about spending too much on extra things,
the time that was frittered away agonizing about details,
the energy wasted on trying to meet someone else’s standards.
Our memories are cobwebbed over with regret
of how it could have been different:
it could have been more responsible, more selfless,
more organized, more healthy, more something.
Even now, looking forward, there’s the sinking feeling
that bulldozers will not be able to clean up the mess we'll make.

We need you like a woman cleaning in May,
opening windows, pulling down dusty drapes,
chairs and rugs dragged out onto the lawn.
Every surface of our lives open and revealed
scoured by soap and spring winds.
The Spirit at work,
hope and new directions moved in like furniture.
Create in us clean corners, Lord,
ordered, uncluttered, functional.
Minds clarified, set to rights,
filled with the freshness of new beginnings.

Confession and Assurance from Isaiah 58:6-7

Open our eyes, Lord, to the modern yoke;     
the burden of our consumer culture,
the debt that holds people fast,
the myth of success which has us by the throat.
We confess that we are trapped.

You offer the possibility of release;
you loose the shackles of greed,
freeing us from the urge to acquire at any cost,
relieving us from the treadmill of busyness.

We are your new releases,
telling a story for this generation.
Feeding the hungry. we whisper peace,
clothing the naked, we murmur hope,
sheltering the homeless, we declare your faithfulness.