Corporate Prayer: We Are Part of Your Story

This is a corporate prayer I wrote for our first Sunday in the gospel of Luke.  I felt intrigued by the controversy over the recipient of Luke's letter.  Was Theophilus a specific person, an official of high rank?  Or are we all Theophilus--in Greek--'lover of God'--and therefore all the intended audience for Luke's letter?  I like to think that even now I am reading a letter written to me.

It is this reflection that prompted the Story theme of our worship.  We are all part of the ongoing story of Jesus' life.  We are all part of the amazing, paradoxical wonder that Luke records.  But sometimes, if you're like me, I question my significance in the Story, and when I stop there, in that place of complacency and discouragement, my sense of purpose and vocation wanes.

 We will follow this confessional with a beautiful, somewhat lost hymn, "I Need Thee Every Hour."  If you have not looked at this hymn in a while, do!  It is a tender prayer that first affirms God's presence with us, then insists upon it in pain or sorrow, then celebrates the active, dynamic presence in us.

   Reader:  God, we are part of the same story that Luke wrote so long ago.  But sometimes we feel that we are insignificant.

     People:  Help us to trust that even the smallest acts of goodness and courage are not lost.

Reader:  God, we are part of your story, but sometimes, in times of doubt, need, and sorrow, we forget to think of you.

     People:  Forgive us.  Have mercy on us when we forget to tell your story to our children and our friends, by word or deed.

Reader:  Forgive us when we lose our courage, when we try to wrest our lives from you and rewrite them after our own desires.

     People: Forgive us when, in our longing for happy endings and easy resolutions, we scorn your gentle, scarred hands.

Reader:  Help us to think of your faithful servants, of Mary, who when she heard of this mysterious and frightening plot twist—that she, a virgin, would bear a child—did not ask for her story to be rewritten, but sang this song of gratitude:

     People:  The Almighty has done great things for me. Holy is his name,

and his faithful love extends age after age to those who fear him.

Reader:  He has used the power of his arm, he has routed the arrogant of heart.

     People:  He has pulled down princes from their thrones and raised high the lowly.

He has filled the starving with good things, sent the rich away empty.