Prayer for Baccalaureate Sunday and Memorial Day Weekend

Holy One, this morning in worship we celebrate our high school graduates, remember this Memorial day weekend those who died in service of their country, and are amazed by your Glory expressed through the Trinity.  How wonderful that the diversity of these expression fills our worship, reflecting the diversity of your Creations and of your love.

And so our prayers this morning reflect this range through variety of our concerns and celebrations.

We rejoice with Jessica, Caitlin, Jackson and McKenna upon their graduation from high school, sharing their hopes for what comes next.  Fill them with your abundant, joyful life no matter what they may do or where their next steps bring them.  Remind them it is not only your love which provides a home for them in both times of joy and sorrow, but this community of faith offers them the same.

For your glory does fill this world O God, filling each and every person no matter who they are, what they do, where in life they are.  Your glory calls us into relationship with each other. Fill us now with your love, that we may live in ways that reflect your glory and love to all whom we encounter.

Your glory is witnessed in the grandeur of your justice which seeks reconciliation and dignity for all rather than punishment, retribution or vengeance.  We are grappling with the results of centuries of racism, misogynism, anti-Semitism, and other forces of division and caste on our common life. Remind us to seek your ways, living out justice as a interwoven community of abundance and care.  Lead us at the same time to  share your perseverance and the call to right wrongs that reduce people to “less than” or “those people” so we can deny their dignity and status as one of your beloved children.

For if we would only live in your ways of justice, we would know peace. Then there would no longer be a need to add to the list of those we remember this weekend who died in service of their country. Help us to honor them by following the ways of Christ so that their deaths not be in vain, living our lives as peace makers willing to lose what is necessary along the way.

Your glory does fill all O God, but sometimes we experience it best in little ways and not in experiences of grandeur. Help us to see it and live it out

in acts of compassion and care towards those hurting in body, mind, and spirit;

 through sitting silently with one who is grieving;

 in offering a cup of coffee or sandwich to someone hungry for both food and dignity;

 in all the ways Jesus does and call us to emulate in each day.

We lift up all these prayers, as well as the unspoken ones of our hearts and spirits in the name of Jesus.  Amen.