Pastoral Prayer for December 11, 2022

(Today’s pastoral prayer is from Kierkegaard translator and scholar Edna Hong.)

Our Farther in heaven, teach us!

Teach us that you are not only a God of abstract forgiveness

but that you in very fact and act can accomplish it in us.

We pray not for a Sunday sense of forgiveness.

We pray not for momentary acts of forgiveness.

We pray for the spirit of forgiveness.

We pray for the power of will to emigrate from our present state

and to move into the new state Jesus created for us,

the state of forgiveness.

We pray that we may become fully naturalized citizens

of the state of forgiveness.

We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.