Prayers 11 29 2009
*Happy Thanksgiving Holiday weekend; First Sunday of Advent; welcome visitors, friends, and family to worship this morning
*Welcome Pastor Chris back from her sabbatical; for her to bring us the message today
*Christmas Craft Faire, 1:00, Fellowship Hall; purchase Lanna Coffee and Chinatown Stories, Vol. 2 as Christmas gifts; also be crafts, cookie bake, senior high fundraising
*MMBB Thank You Offering—last Sunday to give
*2010 Canvass—Unshaken Worship; please make a pledge promise to support the vital work of your church; we are making strong progress
*Next Sunday—Membership Meeting, 1:30 to consider adopting the 2010 Proposed Budget as our spending budget only if we are able to receive financial support; efforts to reduce the budget have come from composting and reducing health benefits from the church staff
*Men’s Fellowship, Saturday, Cliff House for breakfast, 9:00 with spouses; see Dick Wong
*Staff Christmas Love Gift (Nelson and Deacons)
Prayer Concerns
Prayer of God’s People
Almighty God, on the whole, we are rather well fixed down here. Our families dwell secure, without great deprivation or danger. Our friends live lives that are reasonably well off. Our church, while it has needs, does not suffer persecution or peril.
The world, this world, has been good to us. Therefore we praise you for giving us such a good and pleasant time. And yet, we know that you are not just our God, but also God of the whole world and all humanity. Judge us, Lord, for our uncaring and unconcern for the plight of our less fortunate neighbors. Forgive us when we benefit from the status quo without feeling even a twinge of conscience that our benefits are often obtained through the suffering and deprivation of others.
Interrupt our status quo, Living God. Intervene, shake, dismantle, and renew us, we pray, even if it hurts. We ask you at the beginning of this Advent season to help us find real joy this Christmas. We ask you to help us leave some things behind so that we can find other more important things in our lives that offers us true meaning. We ask you to give us the talent of simplicity in an ever more complex world. We ask that you, O Lord, help us to find enjoyment not in the next new great gadget but in our family and friends. In a world where television personality and stars pretend to be our friends, help us to find and make real personal friends whom we can trust and rely on. In a world where we can control the lives of character jumping around our video games, help us instead give up to you the control of our lives. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, whose simple but straightforward life gives us all hope this Christmas and who taught us to pray together, saying, “Our Father…”