Our pastoral prayer this morning is from UCC scripture scholar

and theologian Walter Brueggemann:

September 24, 2023

You are the God from whom no secret can be hid.

You are the God of truth

     to whom the truth must be told.

And so we bring to you the truth of the world:

     the truth of hunger and poverty,

     the truth of need and abandonment and anxiety,

     the truth of hurt and dying,

     the truth of violence and war.

All these truths we submit to your more powerful life-giving truth.

So we bid you, truth-doing God,

     veto the hunger and poverty in our world,

     override the need and abandonment and anxiety

          so palpable among us,

     cancel out the hurt and the dying so pervasive in our world,

     move peaceably against violence and enact your shalom

          in the face of our threats of war.

We do not hold back from you the truth of our need.

Do not hold back from us the gospel truth

     of your mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.

Sway us from our deep distortion into your deep goodness

     that we and our world may again, by your verdict,

     [as you said in the first chapter of Genesis],

     Be “very good.”     Amen.