A Prayer

I prayed the following offertory prayer today at Anderson's First Baptist Church:


Merciful Father,
Thank you for these moments when we bow our heads and try to still our hearts so we can speak to You and let You speak to us.  
Our minds are cluttered with worries we carried in here.  Angers.  Frustrations.  Things left undone.  Things done wrong.  Trouble with our children.  Trouble with our parents.  Bills we can’t pay. Jobs we don’t like.  Inability to find jobs.  Perhaps a spot on an X-ray.  A car needing brakes.
Lord, we aren’t asking You to help us get rid of those thoughts.  Rather, we ask for grace to believe You are more concerned about those things than we are.  You’ve told us to cast all our cares on You because You care for us.  As the old song said, “Take you burden to the Lord and leave it there.”  That’s not easy, but help us to give it a try.  Right now.
We pray for the people right around us here in sanctuary.  We don’t know the loads many of them carry, but You know and You care.  So open us as a loving community to the cares and sorrows of all Your children.
Guide the music and sermon of this hour.  Guide those who teach Sunday school.  Guide in the food and fellowship and deliberation of those who gather for the business meeting.
Beyond this church, we pray for the leaders of our town and county, our state, our nation, our world.  Bring them to awareness of their opportunity, their responsibility to lift those under their watch-care, the need to work for peace among the nations.
As we dedicate these financial gifts, we also offer all these concerns as part of our stewardship of love and life.  We pray in the name of Jesus, who, though He was rich, became poor for our sakes, so that we through His poverty might become rich in the things that really matter.  Amen.