Focus: A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Threshold Moment: (Video)
Welcome: Prolonged times of difficulty can impede our ability to stay creative. The picture of our lives is dulled and hope for a brighter future can fade. We need a touch of inspiration to awaken us from our sleep, as we hear in one of this week’s healing stories. We also awaken to our need to seek out the Divine Healer, reaching out to touch the power we know can restore our intellect and imagination. We emerge ready to re-engage with the world, seeking and seeing solutions, creating different pictures of life renewed just as a mosaic artist creates beauty from broken pieces of glass.
Gathering Music: You Say (by Lauren Daigle) ― Michelle Currie
Opening Prayer of Confession:
Let us acknowledge our need to restore, repair, and renew ourselves so that we might be able to create and imagine new possibilities, new solutions.
Let us pray: God of All Possibilities,
Made in your image, you have tasked us as co-creators of a better world. You bestowed imagination and the ability to learn and progress. Sometimes we are tired and our energy and enthusiasm slows. These have been difficult days to navigate and we have found ourselves weary.
It has felt overwhelming on some days and so we look away,
sometimes even from the needs within our own community.
Help us, Healer.
Show us our energy.
Forgive our cynicism.
Help us to move one step at a time toward greater care for one another. In this silence, we sense and acknowledge our yearning for wholeness.
Silence
Anthem: Love Has Broken Down the Wall (by Mark A. Miller) ― Michelle Currie
Words of Assurance:
Know this: We are gifted with the capacity to affect healing in the world. We are not alone and we can join with others to magnify hope. Christ will answer when we call, when we reach out for what we know can help. For you, for me, for all.
Take a deep breath in to let this truth fill you…
and breathe out with the relief of assurance.
Silence
Opening Hymn: His Eye Is On the Sparrow (by Civilla Durfee Martin/Charles Hutchinson Gabriel) ― Michelle Currie
Readings and Scripture: Contemporary Reflections, Matthew 9:18-26 — Ken Murray
Shared Reflections: Patricia Mulholland and Others
Music: Meditative Instrumental ~ Christ Be All Around Me (by Michael W. Smith) ― Michelle Currie
Musical call to Prayer: (two times) Hush now in quiet peace, be still your mind at ease. The Spirit brings release, so wait upon the Lord.
Prayers of the People:
Lord’s Prayer
Closing Music: Refresh Me (by Leeland) ― Michelle Currie
Benediction: An Old Celtic Blessing
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of God’s hand. Amen.
Postlude: Go In Peace
Our Readings for Today
Contemporary Words
From Prayers of Our Heart by Vienna Cobb Andersen
A Prayer for Artists
Bless the creators, O God of creation,
who by their gifts make the world
a more joyful and beautiful realm.
Through their labors
they teach us to see more clearly
the truth around us.
In their inspiration
they call forth wonder and awe
in our own living.
In their hope and vision
they remind us
that life is holy.
Bless all who create in your image,
O God of creation.
Pour your Spirit upon them
that their hearts may sing
and their works be fulfilling.
Amen.
An Ancient Word
Matthew 9: 18-26
While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.
The Word of the Lord