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7/31/2019 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, P8C Call to Confession
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3:19) Let us confess our sin before God and seek God's mercy. Prayer of Confession, P8C We have forgotten you, O God. We refuse to pay attention to you, turning a cold shoulder to your law of love, plugging our ears, so that we cannot hear your Word. We worship idols of our own making, blindly following into paths of destruction. We are a stiff-necked people, resisting the Holy Spirit's movement in and among us. Hear our cries for mercy! Save us from ourselves, we pray! Save us from our arrogance and pride! Teach us to love you with our whole hearts and to love one another as you love us. Assurance of God's Grace For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: ‘It is Zion, for whom no one cares! (Jeremiah 30:17) In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to all whom you encounter this day~
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7/30/2019 0 Comments Call to Worship, P8C As a parent calls to a child, so God calls to us,
beckoning us to come near, to hold God's hand. Let us look with wonder into the heart of God who loves us beyond measure, and worship with gratitude and praise. 7/26/2019 0 Comments Prayers of the People, P8C Children of unfaithfulness call to you today, Faithful God,
and look for stability and strength, longing to know what it looks like to love unconditionally, to work through conflict, to live in a relationship of grace with one another and journey into the future in covenant. Children of destruction call to you today, God of Hope, from food-insecure cities and burning wildfires, from war torn countries and gang-infested neighborhoods, yearning to run and laugh and play without fear ... yearning for hope. Children of shame call to you today, God of Mercy, embarrassed to call upon your name, certain you could not love us if you knew ... but you do know ... and still you love us all ... in spite of the ways we fail you. Open our ears to hear your Word proclaimed. Open our hearts to receive it. Children of those who call you by other names call to you today, according to the names by which they identify you ... children of other cultures, other faiths, other interpretations of theology, seeking familiarity, seeking understanding, seeking wisdom. Hear, and answer, Lord. Gather all of us together ... all your children ... in the name of love, in a community of grace on earth as it is in heaven. 7/24/2019 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, P7C Call to Confession
We have become unclean by our acts, and prostituted ourselves in our doings. (Psalm 106:39) Let us confess our sin before God and seek God's mercy. Prayer of Confession, P7C We do not deserve your mercy, Lord. We do not deserve your compassion. We have not behaved as children of God, but have responded to your faithfulness with our own unfaithfulness, your unconditional love with our own demands, your hospitality with our divisiveness. We have strayed from your law of love and from the covenant you made with us. Forgive us, we beg you, and lead us back into a life of service that glorifies your name and bears fruit for your kingdom that all who believe may know themselves as children of the living God. Assurance of God's Grace Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10) In the name of Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to all whom you encounter this day. 7/23/2019 0 Comments Call to Worship, P7C Come, you who are faithful
and you have been unfaithful to the Lord your God. Come, you who have known God's mercy and you who believe you are far from it and find mercy in the community of grace. Come, you who identify as children of the Creator and you who do not yet know how you identify but know you are not who others call you. Come, and find redemption among your siblings in Christ. 7/19/2019 0 Comments Prayers of the People, P6C The cries of the needy call out to you,
O God! The plight of the poverty-stricken is deplorable. Those with power and privilege trample over those without, and taunt them with their prestige. Send help, Lord! Women and children are bought and sold as slaves for the wealthy, and toyed with and tossed away as if they are nothing, as if they are less than human, because they are helpless and without a voice. Send help, Lord! The greedy demand more than they deserve, working the system, taxing those who labor intensely out of what little they have. The uneducated are at a distinct disadvantage yet they cannot obtain education in a world where knowledge comes at a price many cannot pay. Send help, Lord! Hear our cries for those who grieve without mercy, and those who die without notice, and those whose lives are not celebrated or even recognized because they are invisible. Send help, Lord! We implore you. Send help! In the name of all that is holy, send help! 7/17/2019 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, P6C Call to Confession
(Jesus said,) "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in." (Matthew 23:13) Let us confess our sin before God and seek God's mercy. Prayer of Confession, P6C Our self-centeredness, our arrogance, our entitlement has impacted the world around us, We have failed to care for our neighbors as we care for ourselves. Often times, our sense of value depends on which end of the almighty dollar we find ourselves, so that we expect to spend less and we expect to receive more, creating a system of economic injustice in a global economy instead of fostering a healthy interdependence. Hear our pleas for mercy, and rescue us from the pain we inflict on others, teaching us the way of love and compassion that Jesus modeled. Assurance of God's Grace I, I am (the One) who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins, (said the Lord). (Isaiah 43:25) In the name of Jesus Christ we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to those whom you encounter this day. 7/16/2019 0 Comments Call to Worship, P6C Come, you who long to keep God's oath,
and keep it rightly, for God welcomes you and calls you God's own. Come, you who are excluded elsewhere, for God welcomes you and calls you God's own. Come, you prophets and preachers, who have been alienated from others by a daring theology of love, for God welcomes you and calls you God's own. Come, and worship God. 7/12/2019 0 Comments Prayers of the People, P5C Open our eyes, Lord,
and help us to see the places where we fall short of the measure you have laid down for us. Quiet our anxieties, Lord, and help us to hear one another rather than jump to our own fear-based conclusions, and season our conversations with mercy and with grace. Strengthen us to stand firm in the face of opposition when we are responding to your will, that we may not fail you or those whose voices need to be heard because the voices of the oppressor are louder. Open our ears, Lord, and help us to hear your words of warning and your call to repentance. Teach us what it means to live according to your rule of love, that your children everywhere may know the companionship of Christ embodied by your people, empowered by the Spirit, emboldened in our words and in our deeds. 7/10/2019 0 Comments Prayer of Confession, P5C Call to Confession
God has set a plumb line in the midst of God's people, promising to lay waste to the sanctuaries where God's people gather but refuse to listen. Let us confess our sin before God and seek God's mercy. Prayer of Confession, P5C Forgive us, O God. We are the ones who hear your word and refuse to obey it. We are the ones who claim to follow and refuse to budge from our places of privilege and power. We are the ones who sense a call to leave behind the comfortable and risk our very selves to prophecy to your people. You have set the plumb line, but we build around our own prejudices, creating faulty foundations that fall to ruin. Hear our prayers for mercy. Help us show the grace we have been shown in the name of Love. Assurance of God's Grace Who is a God like you, asks Micah, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? God does not retain God's anger forever, becuase God delights in showing clemency. (7:18) In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God! Since God has forgiven us in Christ, let us also forgive one another. The peace of Christ be with you. Please extend the peace of Christ to all whom you encounter this day. |
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Julie participated in the 25th Seminar for Certified Zentangle(R) Teacher Training in June, 2019, trained by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. In addition to creating art as a personal spiritual practice, Julie also incorporates the Zentangle(R) method in Prayer Art Retreats in a variety of contexts, including church groups, friend gatherings, and at a local art gallery. Check out the Upcoming Events page for a calendar of events, or use the Contact Us page to inquire about scheduling an event with your group!
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