As the weeks have gone by, we find ourselves approaching the 4th Sunday of Advent when we will light the candle of LOVE. Since we will not have a Christmas Eve service this year, we will also light our CHRIST candle at the center of the wreath at that same time. Soon it will be Christmas!Thank you for joining in these weekly times of prayer and thank you for all the ways that you have been demonstrating God’s LOVE in 2020. Our world has desperately needed practical demonstrations of LOVE in this past year and will continue to need us to reveal God’s LOVE in the year ahead. There is a Scripture that guides us in this crucial matter of loving: “7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” (I John 4:7-9) LOVE does come from God and God has been so generous in loving us enough to send Jesus into our world. I wonder, do we really appreciate all the opportunities that God arranges for us to LOVE people around us and to ensure that they know we LOVE them? When we say “Merry Christmas” do we sensitively realize that Christmas is not “merry” for everyone? How will we prayerfully find ways to LOVE this Christmas season? Praying for God’s assistance in loving each other will result in us noticing and taking time to listen to how people are feeling. Some of our health care workers are carrying the stress of long hours at work and the ongoing worry of not wanting to bring the Covid virus home to their families. Many people are troubled by job loss or businesses closing and do not even know what Christmas will look like for them this year. Most of us will have a very different Christmas with limitations on gathering with family and friends. As always, there are a host of memories at Christmas and some of those touch our hearts with the awareness of those we are missing. Several households will be without loved ones at Christmas this year because of the toll that Covid has taken. Christmas will be a lonely time for those who live alone or for residents of care homes who cannot be with family as they usually would be. Christmas will be a hard time for those who are homeless and those who struggle with addictions. In the midst of all this, our choices to LOVE with God’s immense LOVE, will matter! Tomorrow, Wednesday December 16th at 1 pm we can thank God for His miraculous LOVE in sending Jesus and we can pray for all the ways that people will know God’s LOVE through us this Christmas. Please note that there will not be emails over the next 2 weeks for WEDNESDAY PRAYER TOGETHER. I encourage you to pray often over this time and we will have our WEDNESDAY PRAYER TOGETHER again on January 6th.
Praying God’s blessing and loving care for You and your family over Christmas 2020 and into the New Year ahead, Pastor Lola
Our God thank You for this truth that love comes from You. We know that You are the source of all love. When we love, we know You in a deeper way and that is the desire of our hearts. Sometimes our prayers become lists of all that we want. Forgive us for not including in our prayers, an awareness of how You can love through us. At this time approaching Christmas, we marvel again at how much You loved our world that You sent your Son, Jesus. We pray that Jesus will be at the center of everything this Christmas. Thank You for family traditions and meaningful ways that we celebrate Christmas. We pray that Your abundant love will motivate all of our plans for this Christmas. Thank You that in the gifts we give, we can convey Your love. Thank You that in giving our time, we can show Your love. For all the people who have experienced struggles this past year, we ask for Your love to shine through us. For the personal struggles that we have experienced, we thank You for the ways that You have answered and continue to answer our prayers. We want people to know Your love for them through us. Please remove anything in us that gets in the way of people seeing and believing You and Your love for them. We think now of all the people who are part of our lives. Some we know well and feel close to them. Others we hardly know at all. Each person needs to know Your love and we wonder how You will choose to use us for that to happen. Loving God, we pray that our concern will not be with what other people think or with making impressions. Our prayer is that we will see people with Your eyes of love and compassion. If we can see people and our world as You do, then we will be responding with Your kind of love. We will be serving You more faithfully. Please expand our understanding of love. Sometimes this will demand more from us than we think we can give. You God can supply what is needed for us to love as You call us to love. Show us how you want that to happen this Christmas and into the New Year before us. In these moments we look back over the year behind us. We could not have faced all the challenges without You and Your constant Presence with us. Thank You that out of the love You have for us, You did not leave us by ourselves. We pray that we too will be with people in loving them and letting them know they are not alone. For those wondering how they will get through today and tomorrow, help us to care and to be willing to accompany them. When we grow weary and overwhelmed with all that we are facing, please remind us of Your infinite love. Our God of grace You have taught us over and over in this past year how much we need You and we thank you for all the ways You have loved us. We make it our prayer that the light of the love of Jesus will shine brighter and brighter in us and through us every day. Help us to find effective ways to bring the light of Your extreme love to our world. We are grateful that You have been with us each day of this year and that You will be with us each day of the year to come. Thank You for Your tender love for us in sending Jesus to give us life. We bring this prayer to you in Jesus’ Name. AMEN