Scarsdale Congregational Church Pastoral Prayer About the SCC

Phil Washburn gave this pastoral prayer on Sunday, March 9, 2003. It is a prayer which could be prayed on any Sunday in the Scarsdale Congregational Church.

Everlasting God, we have gathered here for reasons that are as many as are we.
   We gather out of need, out of curiosity, habit, hope...
        out of a desire to worship, to be with friends, to discover friends,
            out of a need to find meaning, to be healed, to be relieved of burdens.
We come to be comforted, to be challenged, to fulfill obligations, to pray,
                 to find rest for our souls.
We come for reasons grand and small, for reasons understandable and mysterious.
    Our of the welter of our humanity we come...
           come to meet you here...
                 we come desiring to come into your presence.

Accept, we pray, the conflicted truths about us
     and help us to do the same toward others.
Release in us, we pray, the power that you have given us
        to be the persons you created us to be.

We pray also this morning for our families.
  We pray that it may be well with them
      as well as with friends and neighbors, with community and country
          and with the wider world...our families-all.
We pray that it may be well with all those we name now in our hearts in silence.

(silence)

Gracious God, turn us toward your world that we might love it as you do,
     and that our lives may become channels of grace in our deeds as well as in our words.
          We ask it in Christ's compassionate name.
                Amen.