leadinginworship

God chooses face-time

We’re always calling God.

Where are you God?

Why don’t you pick up?

The phone rings and rings,

echoing in that heavenly chamber.

We check the number,

this has got to be right.

Finally God’s answering machine clicks in.

We hear God’s voice,

“Why are you calling me?

I’m standing right beside you.”

via carolpenner.typepad.com

Advent Peace Prayer for our So Smart World

Thank you God for giving us
minds that think and ideas that soar.
Thank you for giving us language and writing,
and prosperity that enables education for many.
Thank you for brilliant inventors who created
technological marvels; radio waves radiating,
microscopes magnifying, computers computing.
Thank you that we have even created artificial intelligence
and robots that do work for us and with us.
Today we pray for good things gone bad;
for social media tools that isolate us from our neighbour,
for algorithms that misinform us about our world,
for face-recognition surveillance that curtail freedoms,
and for weapons that can track and kill half a world away.
In our smartness, we have created killing robots,
and now the world is poised on the new frontier
of autonomous weapons.
Hear our prayer this advent season.
Give scientists insight and politicians wisdom
as they negotiate treaties for weapons
we have only begun to imagine.
We feel so smart, but we need the help
of angels with a message of peace on earth.
Let their song ring out this year,
a global anthem for an end to war, against all odds.
You plant that song in each of us,
and in the hearts of every child born this Christmas, Amen.

Your language of love

Words dance into space
bouncing off satellites:
my voice rocketing
through the stratosphere here
ricocheting into your ear there.
Your thumbs type text
and even as you press send,
I receive your message.
Across the miles
the image of your presence
hovers on my screen,
our voices intertwining on this internet.
My grandparents were as proud
of their telegraph, reliable mail service,
and the wonder of the telephone.

And for all this, Lord,
are we better connected?
Has all this technology
enabled us to live more peacefully,
more in tune with one another?
Have all our inventions
increased our capacity for compassion
or changed the desires of our hearts?
As our means of communication
increase in clarity and capacity
and speed and sophistication,
touch our hearts.
May our longing to reach one another
be matched by our yearning
to learn your language of love.

The World Connected

Words and images zoom through air,
ricochet in cyberspace,
bounce off tiny screens and speakers
to eyes and ears and brains;
yours, mine.
in fractions of seconds gigabytes
scatter and dart at our whim and call.
Human ingenuity sparkles;
we have taken the shout, the messenger,
the smoke signal, the letter, the telegram
and raised it to the nth degree.
We are the world connected.

And so today we stand with our tools in our hands:
you in your room in Israel,
me in the basement of our home in Canada.
You can describe the heat, the sickness, the worry.
I can say, “I love you” and “I’m sorry”.
All this technology and only this disconnect:
I am here, and you need help there.
In the end we both stand silent, listening.
This is our prayer, slipping through space.

Great webs of connection

Great webs of connection circle the earth.

They burrow in cables under the ocean,

they permeate the air with radio waves,

they bounce off satellites in space.

The world is teeming with nets of interaction,

a global feast of signals, prepared and digested

each and every minute of every day.

Byte by byte, God scans the fragmented world.

Comfortable with every platform,

fluent in every operating system,

God follows every thread to its ultimate conclusion.

God knows where you log on,

when you are off-line and on-line.

God knows your usernames, your passwords,

your physical and virtual memory.

God can hack through every firewall you build.

Maybe you want to think of God as a Webmaster,

so you can choose to surf a different site.

Or maybe you see God as a great Provider

that you’ll log in with someday.

It doesn’t matter if you didn’t look at the readme files.

Someday a window you have never seen will open,

showing you something so fleeting and beautiful,

it will capture you completely.

You will glimpse the power source between us

that has nothing to do with keyboards and electricity.

Great webs of connection circle the earth.

You won’t want to press control alt delete ever again.

 

God chooses face-time

We’re always calling God.

Where are you God?

Why don’t you pick up?

The phone rings and rings,

echoing in that heavenly chamber.

We check the number,

this has got to be right.

Finally God’s answering machine clicks in.

We hear God’s voice,

“Why are you calling me?

I’m standing right beside you.”

Prayer for Playing

As children, as young people, and as adults

we thank you God for time to rest and play!

Help us to choose activities in our leisure time

that re-create us and diminish no one.

Tune into TV programs with us.

Listen to music with us.

Surf websites with us.

Play sports with us.

Party with us.

Watch movies with us.

Enjoy our hobbies with us.

Read magazines and books with us.

Be a guest in every chat-room we frequent

and a spectator of every game we play.

We invoke your presence as

Immanuel, God-with-us, this week as we play,

in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Divine Default Settings

In our remote control world

advertisements compete to control

body, mind, thoughts.

Pop-ups telling us how

to look, walk, eat, buy.

Telling us who to be, what to see

who to fear, what to wear

how to think, where to shop.

Stop. Why?

Your spirit, a divine virus checker

sends the message:

No downloads are necessary.

Our identity hardwired

(divine default settings)

from the moment of conception:

Created in the image of God.

The invitation: a soft-wear yoke,

completely compatible,

provided by the tenderest of Technicians.