Dear Lord God,

In this season of Lent with its emphasis on devotion, sacrifice, and recommitment we anticipate and look forward to our remembrance of Jesus’ death and our celebration of his resurrection.

We pray, Lord, that as we reflect upon your love demonstrated through the cross and the empty tomb and as we worship you, your Spirit will renew our faith and bring joy into our hearts for these extraordinary events and what they mean for our living in these days and times. Please deepen our awareness that Jesus’ death and resurrection are a sure source of hope for our troubled world and true life for our spirits.

In the power of Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen

“Grant Us Visions That Shall Lift Us”

O God our eternal Father, we praise thee for gifts of mind with which thou hast endowed us. We are able to rise out of the half-realities of the sense world to a world of ideal beauty and eternal truth. Teach us, we pray Thee, how to use this great gift of reason and imagination so that it shall not be a curse but a blessing. Grant us visions that shall lift us from worldliness and sin into the light of thine own holy presence. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

This is a prayer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave as part of his radio broadcast from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, July 5 – September 6, 1953.

Thou, Dear God: Prayers that Open Hearts and Spirits, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., edited and introduced by Lewis V. Baldwin, Beacon Press, 2012.

What Interest All the Circumstanced of Jesus’ Birth Have for Us

Christmas Day

December 25, 1790

“To bring thanks and worship before you, merciful and gracious God, is always our first concern when we gather to draw heavenly wisdom from the source of your revelations and to remember your blessings together. Especially today, however, nothing must be more pressing for us than this. We would not want to praise you for anything that would somehow enable your goodness to redound to humans in his day. It is the remembrance of the greatest and most priceless gift that you have deigned to give humankind for which we gather here. Praise and thanks to your Son that he became human, that he descended to us, that he did not consider being equal to God thievery; rather, he gave himself up and accepted the form of a servant and became like us in every respect, this in order to bless, or save, us. Praise and thanks to you, O Father, that you have sent your Son to us, him without whom we were lost, and also that you may fulfill the wish of our hearts that this festival too might strengthen us in our faith in Christ, in our love for what is good and in our hope for your further mercy! Amen.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christmas Sermons