Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace. - Martin Luther


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Another Great Day to Pray

Tomorrow, the first Thursday in May, is the National Day of Prayer in the United States. (It's been the first Thursday in May since it was signed into law by President Truman in 1952).

In many ways, it's just another great day to pray, and perhaps to be more intentional about praying for our government, leadership, democracy, etc. In my prayer  life, I try to remember to pray "your will be done, O Lord," and not assume I always know exactly what that is - if I ever do. As a citizen of the most powerful nation on the planet, I do well to remember that Christian faith and the strength of empire don't always mix so well (if ever). That said, I am incredibly thankful for the freedoms I enjoy and the standard of living I too often take for granted.

Looking for some resources to enrich your prayer life?

The Lutheran Church of Honolulu has a great online resource for praying the daily offices at Daily Prayer. You can learn more about the ancient practice of praying throughout the day.

The ELCA Prayer Center has several resources as well, including a prayer for each day and a prayer for healing video.

Did you know you can submit a prayer request to the CtK office (received by both pastors and the office manager) on the CtK website? Just go to the online prayer request form.

May God bless us as we turn to him in prayer - lifting up our longings and concerns, being still in God's presence, and trusting that God hears all our prayers, as he has promised to do.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing these resources.

Anonymous said...

Hoe does one go about getting in sync with DAILY PRAYER, so one rceives the appropriate reading/prayers for the day at hand? I clicked on a couple of the links, but didn't seem to be doing it corretly. Patsy O.

LCH webmaster said...

Thanks for your link to the LCH Daily Prayer pages.

In answer to the question above, if you follow that link, you will have choices for prayers appropriate for all different times of day. Each one presents a series of prayers and readings for that specific day. The order for the service and prayers are from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (since ELW is under copyright), but the readings match the daily readings from the back of the ELW.

The site is set for Hawaii time, so if the day isn't correct for you, change the settings to match your time zone.

Pastor Lindean said...

Thank you, LCH Webmaster!