As you gather with friends and family today, we offer you 3 prayers from David Davis to use around your table:
Easter Day 2008 Prayers of the People
Oh Mighty and Life-giving God, by your grace-filled power and with your wondrous love for us, you raised your Son Jesus from the dead. With his resurrection, you have forever trampled the force of death and you have opened the gate of abundant and everlasting life. Up from the grave he arose, showing us the truth of your Gospel, revealing for us and for all of creation, the blessed hope of promise amid suffering, the light of life amid the shadows of death, the persistent joy that sounds amid the silence of despair. We praise you. We thank you. We celebrate you, O God of power and life and forgiveness and mercy. Our lips are full of your Holy Name and our hearts overflow with your Spirit, for Christ has Risen. He has Risen Indeed!
By your grace, Lord God, transform us to be your Easter people. In your Spirit, inspire us to be witnesses to the presence of the Risen Christ among us. Confirm in us, the assurance of his presence with us, here in all of our brokenness, here despite the certainty of our mortality, here in this life were we ought to see his face in the tired and the poor and the stranger and the other. With your wisdom, Heavenly God, lead us along a life-giving, death stomping pathway of justice and righteousness and peace.
So overwhelm us, so startle us, so take us a-back this Easter morning, illumine the shadows that linger and drop the blinders that cling to our eyes and remove the haze of indifference, so that we might see Jesus and his hope for us, so that we might see Jesus and his vision of your creation in full bloom, so that we might see Jesus, that we might then work in and for his kingdom; a kingdom where the hungry are fed and children are welcomed, where the sick are healed, where sins are forgiven and the lame walk and prisoners are set free, where those who mourn are comforted and the peacemakers are blessed and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are forever satisfied, where the nations are healed where war is learned no more, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, where the dead rise from the grave and gather forever around the throne of your grace.
Use us, your Easter people, Living God, use us as instruments of prayer, even now, Holy One. Hear these prayers that we offer deep within our hearts, prayers breathed into the silence offered amid Easter’s cacophony of praise.
We offer these prayers, as we would live, in the name of the Risen Christ, whose resurrection unleashes our salvation. And we pray, as he has taught us…..
Easter Day 2011 Prayers of the People
Great God Almighty, God of life, abundant and eternal, God of resurrection power, God of death conquering hope, God of darkness shattering light, God of healing, reconciling love, God of sin stomping forgiveness, God who makes all things new, Great God Almighty….we thank you this Easter Day for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for his rising from the tomb, for the breath of life that he shared, that Spirit giving and kingdom forming commission to all who would follow him, and live in him, for his life giving victory over the powers and principalities of this world, for his promised presence with us until the end of the age. We praise you, Everlasting Lord for the Risen Christ; our prophet, priest, and king.
Unleash the mystery of the resurrection among us Lord God, transform us to be your Easter people. In your Spirit, inspire us to be witnesses to the presence of the Risen Christ among us. Confirm in us, the assurance of his presence with us, here in all of our brokenness, here despite the certainty of our mortality, here in this life were he taught us to see his face in the tired and the poor and the stranger and the other. With your wisdom, Heavenly God, lead us along a life-giving, death stomping pathway of justice and righteousness and peace.
Recast the power of the resurrection in all the world, Holy God. That you would be about the promise of doing a new thing in your creation, that the divine beauty of a new heaven and a new earth might break upon the world as fresh and as certain as the dawn of a new day, that creation’s moan might turn to a glad shout, that the cry of those who suffer might turn to a dance, that the nations posturing for power might turn to a posture of praise to you, O Lord God. With your mighty peace, Loving Lord, transform the earth to your kingdom that stretches from east to west, and from north to south.
Refresh the promise of the resurrection in each of our lives, O God of saving grace. Take the hearts that are heavy with grief and wrap them with a sense of eternity deep within. Take the minds that are wrought with anxiety and anoint them again with the peace that passes understanding. Take the bodies that broken, or battling, or worn, and pour out a healing so far beyond words and a comfort so beyond imagination. Take those who find themselves walking in darkness and rekindle the assurance of your light, a light that comes by the magnitude of your grace, and the daring resurrection promise of your presence with us, now and forever, making the ordinariness of our lives, unbelievably sacred.
For Christ has Risen! He has Risen Indeed!
Prayers of the People Easter Day 2013
Thanks be to you, Almighty God, on this Resurrection Day. Thanks be to you, for the victory you have given us through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to you, Mighty and Merciful God of life, for your death conquering love, your darkness shattering light, and your hope-filled promise of a triumphant coming kingdom where the hungry are forever filled, the poor are forever lifted up, swords are forever plowshares, and righteousness and justice forever flow like a mighty river. Thanks be to you, O God.
In the joy of this Easter Day, as the songs of praise fill the air, anoint us afresh with your Holy Spirit. Shower us again with your grace, and so bless us with a full remembering of the gospel; that the stories of Jesus might nest forever in our hearts, that the truth of the gospel might be seared in our bones, that the life of discipleship we lead may be grounded not in fear but in comfort. That, indeed we may be sent out into your world to proclaim the Good News with the earthiness of our lives….steadfast in our yearnings to please and glorify you, immovable in our commitment to compassion and peace, and always excelling, abounding, increasing in our work as servants for your kingdom.
Basking in the warmth and the light and the power of your Resurrection promise, we are bold to pray this morning, Holy God, to pray for those around us we know who grieve, whose hearts are broken, those for whom death is all too real right now……Comfort your people, O God, with resurrection hope.
We are resolute to pray, this morning Faithful God, to pray for your world and for the violence and hatred that too often seems to define it. For vulnerable peoples all across the land, for regions where despair only rises, for leaders and nations who can choose to work for peace…Inspire your people, O God, with resurrection hope.
We are persistent to pray this morning, God with Us, to pray for the witness of your people, for those who are working for a kingdom to come, for those who are telling of a world where all are one, for those who are weeping for a world where the kingdom is so clearly not yet…Empower your people, O God, with resurrection hope.
Hear our prayer, Gracious God, Risen Savior, Guiding Spirit, for while we may not be able to figure out resurrection, you have instilled deep within us the confidence, the assurance, the knowledge, that in the Lord, in you, our labor, our prayer, our lives are never in vain. So may we live now and forever to the Glory of your name.