Daily Prayers for August 23
O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you
as the day rises to meet the sun.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Come, let us bow down and the bend the knee : let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
Song “Magnificat”
You lift the lowly and humble the proud : to feed us together at your table.
Psalm 113:4 – 7
The Lord is high above all nations : and his glory above the heavens.
Who is like the Lord our God, who sits enthroned on high : but stoops to behold the heavens and the earth?
He takes up the weak out of the dust : and lifts up the poor from the ashes.
He sets them with the princes : with the princes of his -people.
You lift the lowly and humble the proud : to feed us together at your table.
2 Sam-uel 7:1 – 17 Romans 8:31 – 39
You lift the lowly and humble the proud : to feed us together at your table.
Mother Teresa said, “We are called to be contemplatives in the heart of the world — by seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time, and his hand in every happening; seeing and adoring the presence of -Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor.”
Prayers for Others
Our Father
God of mercy, you cast the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. Free us from the ghettoes of poverty and the ghettoes of wealth that we might meet on the level ground at the foot of the cross. Amen.
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you;
may he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm;
may he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you;
may he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.
Confession
The Scriptures have much to say about not coming to the altar if we are holding something against a sister or brother. We are told that we will be forgiven inasmuch as we forgive. The early church was known for its public confessions of sins. Many traditions of Christianity have practiced public confession, and many great revivals have been sparked by folks beating their breasts and confessing sins to one another.
Consider ways of creating a space for confession to happen. We have built in some space for confession in each evening prayer office, but there may be other community rituals you want to practice. One practice used in some communities is “prouds and sorries,” where each person is given the space to share something they are proud of and something they are sorry about. Just as we confess things that are wrong, we also need to be reminded that we are better than the worst things we do. Reconciliation is one of the fruits of confession, and it is worth thinking about ways of speaking into each other’s lives as we hope to restore whatever may have been broken or lost. (Some communities respond to confessions by saying together, “We proclaim to you God’s forgiveness and ours.”)
Confessional prayer assumes that our worship takes place in a deeply flawed community. The church has always been a worrisome and dysfunctional place. But by grace we can take small steps to restore trust. Maybe it is writing a note to someone we have offended or calling up someone we have murmured to (or about) and asking for their forgiveness. Maybe it means each week choosing to do something nice for someone it’s hard for you to like. Sometimes we call this “doing penance.” It’s not that we have to do an act of penance to earn God’s grace; it’s the opposite — because we have experienced God’s grace, we can’t help but do some act of grace toward another person.
