The Prayers of the People

Based on “Honoring God in Creation” – Form 3 – on the theme of air

God be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Breath of God, in the Beginning your divine exhalation sang forth the mighty theme of Being itself.  Your Word spoke Creation’s very framework.  And you animate all living things with that same deep inspiration, that holy breath.  Mindful of the many ways that breath and air affect our lives, we thank you and we pray to you for our lives and for the life of the world around us.

God in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

Jesus, you breathed your Holy Spirit upon the apostles in the Upper Room and that same Spirit fills the lungs of the Church today.  The Spirit helps us in our weakness, interceding for us with sighs too deep for words.  We seek, in our worship and in our days, to respond to your sacred indwelling with hymns of praise and thanksgiving and words of prayer and prophecy.  We pray to you today, in a particular way, for your Church here in the Diocese of Chicago and the Evanston Deanery, especially for Bishop Paula Clark and the people of St. Matthew’s Church in Evanston and Whayne their priest-in-charge.  Quiet our anxious hearts to inhale deeply - drawing upon your strength that we might know your peace.  Help us to be still and know that you are God.  

God in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

Giver of Good Gifts, you bestowed upon us the wild, clean air, world-mothering, wrapped about our fragile earth like swaddling clothes.  We pray to you for our leaders, in government and in business.  Remind them that no one person, nation or corporation owns the air - that all depend upon it.  Impress upon those in authority the need to safeguard clean air for the life of the world.  Grant them an urgent awareness that we are but stewards of your Creation, not owners of it, and that it is only by your free gift that we exist at all.

God in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

Divine Artisan, you molded humankind from the dust of the stars and breathed your divine life into our souls.  Though your presence among us can sometimes feel as invisible as the wind, we know that you are ever with us, and we seek to perceive more and more your gentle mercy as the breeze upon our skin.  We ask that you touch - with your healing, restoring grace - the lives of all those who are sick or suffering, all those for whom we now pray, silently or aloud, Sally, Sherry, Isabelle, Norris, Andre, Adele & Rick, Donna, Leigh, Quinn, Griffin & Cheryl, Patricia.

Are there others? (Silence)

Refresh us all, Holy One, enliven us.  Raise us up, as on eagles’ wings.

God in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

Risen Lord, you ascended into heaven and promised us that, by your grace, we will join you in that high realm beyond the fog, the clouds, the skies, the stars, beyond the veil of our vision and our wildest imaginings.   We ask your mercy this day for all who have died and for all who mourn, that they may rise with you beyond all pain, fear, darkness, and death into the clear, bright air of eternal life.

God in your mercy,

hear our prayer.

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever..                                       -- Book of Common Prayer

Amen.