The Greatest Commandment: A prayer for Pentecost 23 (25 October 2020)

See also: The Greatest Commandment: A sermon for Pentecost 23

Let us pray

Lord, your love for us is revealed in so many practical ways.
You touched the leper, welcomed the outcast,
blessed the children and responded to a mother’s cry.
You loved even those who rejected you,
and you gave your life for every one of our sins.
And you call us to love.
You declare that our love for others is your love in action.

Lord, we confess that we limit your love.
We love those we like
And we turn away from those we fear,
those who challenge us, those who oppose us.
We limit our loving to what we think we can cope with,
have time for and can afford and that will not overwhelm us.

Yet we have the grace of God in our hearts
and the resources of heaven at our disposal.
Teach us, Lord, to love bravely, to love more widely
and to love more passionately.

We pray for our Covid-19 world:
For those finding a way forward
and for those caring for the sick and quarantined,
for vaccines and treatment programmes,
for those who have lost loved ones
and those who have lost jobs and homes and their sense of security.

We pray for America as it goes into one of the most challenging of elections on 3 November.
And we pray for South Africa as we look for a way forward from the corruption, anger and conflicts that dominate our lives.

Help us to love so that the world will discover a better way to live.

In Jesus’s name,
Amen