Prayer in Summer Storms

When life is chaotic, Christ is sure.

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Father, the weather of our lives is unpredictable, but we know that You are constant and ever-sure in each season.

Like the thunderstorms of summer, we too are inconstant and frequently blown by forces that make us unsteady and unpredictable amid the challenges and trials of life.

You know our frame, our limitations, our weaknesses. Despite our best defenses, we falter, fail, and fall.

Help us to see that our efforts at self-defense always leave us short of the deliverance only experienced through surrender to You. Give us the ability to see the folly of resisting our great need for Your divine care and grace in each moment of our lives.

As we confess we can never scale upward to the perfect heights we seek, we give all the more thanks that in lovingkindness You descend to us.

In the blessings of our daily experiences, in the bold assertions of Your word, in the beautiful community of the church- You show us more of who we can be through grace.

Yet even these gifts would be nothing without the Giver.

Incarnate in Bethlehem, walking in Galilee, dying outside Jerusalem, rising in power to die no more.

In Jesus, You come among us clothed in the dust and ashes of creation.

You do not offer an absentee love, but place the fullness of Yourself in our midst.

To the vulnerable, You are a protector.

To the self-sufficient, You are a servant.

To the prideful, You are a warning.

To the broken, You are a healer.

To the burdened, You are a liberator.

To the lonely, You are a true companion.

To the hungry and thirsty, You are Daily Bread and Living Water.

To the lost, You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In grace, You choose to place Your love upon us. From Your bounty, You extend constant sustaining blessings and the hope of everlasting salvation.

What more could You do to give Yourself to us and for us?

Help us to see this love. Help us to accept it. Help us to experience it more and more fully, and help us to live our lives in response to it. In this season when all seems awash in the power and posturing of this world, let us choose to pass forward the compassion we have received in Jesus.

Amid tense times and uncertain days, may our lives be marked by a Christ-like humility that silences the mouths of critics and opens the hearts of cynics.

Let us be neither bewitched by power nor lulled into passivity. Give us the courage to withstand the assaults of enemies and the compromises of friends. Grant us, as Your people, the ability and the desire to faithfully shine light into the darkness.

Let us not be tossed by the stormy winds that threaten from both within and without, but let us instead be anchored to a love that cannot be shaken and will not be moved now or in eternity.

In Christ’s holy name and through His storm-calming power we pray, amen.

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