Prayers from the Remembrance Sunday Service
Two of David Sim’s prayers at the Remembrance Sunday Service.
1. Prayer of Adoration and Confession and the Lord’s Prayer (Ps 90)
An adaptation of Psalm 90 for Remembrance Sunday.
Lord God, through every sorrow and across every generation, you have been our refuge and our true home.
Long before the mountains rose from the earth, long before the world was shaped, you were God, and you love us with an everlasting love.
A thousand years vanish before your eyes like a single breath in the cold.
And so we can come before you today with open hearts and deep gratitude, clinging to your steady presence even when everything else around us shakes.
* * *
We stand before you carrying the real grief and shame of our broken world.
You see right through us: you see our hidden motives, our coldness of heart, and the bitter divisions we nurture.
We look upon the appalling tragedy of war: the young lives cut short, the homes destroyed, the unbearable grief of families, and the terrible ruin caused by human pride and greed.
Lord, have mercy on us!
Forgive us where even we have chosen retaliation over reconciliation.
Forgive us where we have applauded power instead of defending the weak.
And forgive us where we have treated lightly the heartbreaking cost of the peace handed down to us.
* * *
Teach us wisdom, O God.
Help us to see how fragile and precious each human life is, so that we may not waste another day in hatred or apathy.
Meet us in our sorrow, and flood our hearts this morning with your steadfast love, so that we may live with hope.
Do not let the sacrifices of the past be in vain.
Take the frail work of our hands and use it to build justice, and set our hearts on fire with a passionate longing for peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
2. Prayer of Thanksgiving and Intercession
Inspired by Present on Earth, 1995 WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow G2 3DH, Scotland. Concluding Trinitarian prayer adapted from 24/7 Prayer.
God of grace and peace,
on this Sunday of remembrance, we bring you our thanksgiving:
that our silence is not empty, and no cry of anguish is lost to you;
that you do not hide your face from the afflicted, but in Christ entered our deepest darkness to meet us there;
for the gift of peace and the fragile freedom we enjoy;
and for all who in times past and present have put the needs of others before their own.
LORD, IN YOUR MERCY, HEAR OUR PRAYER.
O Christ the Healer,
by your wounds others are made whole,
by your tears sorrow is washed away.
Come with kindness
to all who carry wounds (seen and unseen);
to those who carry the quiet ache of bereavement,
to those who live with trauma, illness, or frailty,
and to all who today need your touch, your time,
or who simply need to know that you remember them.
LORD, IN YOUR MERCY, HEAR OUR PRAYER.
O Christ the Peacemaker,
stubbornness condemns us,
unsure as we are to walk the road that leads to peace.
Fulfil in our time the prophet’s vision:
teach nations to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Show us the humbler, braver path,
where we learn war no more,
and by which our warfare may be turned to welfare.
LORD, IN YOUR MERCY, HEAR OUR PRAYER.
O Christ the Liberator,
the chains of death and fear could not hold you,
yet prejudice, oppression, and false divisions continue to ensnare your world.
Where humanity cries out against inhumanity
and where the earth mourns the scars of our neglect,
deliver all from evil.
LORD, IN YOUR MERCY, HEAR OUR PRAYER.
O Christ the Stranger,
you meet us when we are not ready for you;
you sit with those society ignores or fears;
you knock on the door we are hesitant to open;
you say the word we are reluctant to hear.
Come, where you are kept at arm’s length
and take the hand that needs to hold you.
Let us be still for a while…
Bring before God the name of someone who is hurting, or a situation that feels unresolved.
We don’t hold them before a distant God, but before the One who walked through the darkness before us, and who refuses to leave our side.
* * *
LORD, IN YOUR MERCY, HEAR OUR PRAYER.
Lord Jesus Christ,
we believe that you are God;
we believe that you are true to your promise to answer the prayers of your people;
Father, help us to live this day to the full, being true to you in every way.
Jesus, help us to give ourselves away to others, being kind to everyone we meet.
Spirit, help us to love the lost, proclaiming Christ in all we do and say.
Amen.
(Image above by Tep Ro from Pixabay; image below by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay)
