Dear Member,
  Attached is the prayer for this week's Wednesday evening Lenten service which was cancelled.
  The purpose of our mid-week Lenten services this year is to pray for what we need to keep being Christian in a culture in which it's hard to keep being Christian, truly Christian. Just as Jesus would go off now and then to a lonely place to pray for the strength to keep being Jesus, so too we come to a quiet place to pray for what we need to keep living as Christ calls us to. While the attached prayer does not speak directly to the corona-virus crisis, it does speak to how we are to be in all times, not just when things are at their best but also when things are at their worst, especially when things are at their worst.
  I hope you can use the prayer to guide your prayers this week. Â
              God be with you,
                Pastor HalenzaÂ
A Prayer for Lent
(March 18, 2020)
(adapted from Frederick Bucchner)
O Lord, praise be to you
                  for giving us back the world,
               for the miracle of waking,
                                       new again,
           into the newness of another day.
       Praise be to you
                  for our freedom not simply to be
                                             your children
              but to choose to be.
   Praise be to you
                  for our waking minds
           through which we not only live
                                        but know we live
         and can marvel at your gift of life to us,
                and can offer our lives to you
                                        to use as you will.
O Lord, guide us, we pray,
              down the unknown corridor
           of this day and every day.
         Lead us, each one, to the one door
                             of all the many doors
                          you would have us open.
         Give us the courage to speak a word
                                        of love and healing
                       in a world of hate and division.
          Give us ears to hear you speak
                                 at every turning of way –
                              to listen,
                           to truly listen,
                        to hear,
                               and to obey,
                     even when the heart within us faints,
                         even when so many other voices
                                call us away from you.
           Give us the strength to choose to be yours,
                 to choose words that are your words,
                                thoughts that are your thoughts,
                         actions that are your actions,
               so that this day and every day in some small way
                      we would be Christs to others,
                                   be Christian
                                and keep being Christian
                              in a way that you would recognize
                                           and know
                                        the joy of that.
O Lord, help us to live this day
       as though it were the first of all our days
                   or the last
                           of all our days.
Amen.