Stewardship – Talents intercession 2015

Nurturing God

we watch as the bright sun and soft rain calls forth the flowers in the verges, the leaves on the trees, green shoots of growth from the bare earth.

Though we, and nature, have sown and planted, it is from you the wonder of these signs of new life burst forth.

We are blessed and grateful for this beauty, this abundance, which brings delight for the eye and optimism for the future, with food growing to sustain and nourish us.

We are all too aware, not all are as blessed as we are. More and more of your people in this country rely on foodbanks to feed themselves and their families.

Christ our Lord, once a refugee

we bless and thank you for the safety and security we have, through the good fortune of living in this country.

we watch with horror the news of desperate people, risking life in overcrowded boats to reach a better life. How awful must life be, that this is their better option?

We can feel so helpless, as we watch others drown, as we see friends many miles away struggle to grow food

yet you have blessed us with intellects, with voices, with the ability to speak out on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.

May we use these talents wisely, in accordance with your will, that all will come to know the good news of your love.

We thank you for all who have served, taught, encouraged and lead us, in the past and the present.

May we have the grace to allow those who you have gifted in these ways to follow their calling, to support and encourage them in all they do and say, for it is you who calls, it is you who leads, it is you whom they serve.

Compassionate God

lover of the outcast, the stranger, the poor, the widowed, the mournful

we thank you for all the times in our lives you have loved us, completely, utterly, without condition, even when we thought you we distant from us.

Comfort those in this church, in this parish, in this world who feel you are nowhere near them, that you have abandoned them.

Give us hearts of compassion too, that in our words and actions, those we know who are struggling may know your love, your presence shining as a radiant light from us.

We thank and bless you for yesterday’s wall of work coffee morning. For all the planning and preparation, for all who came to support it and for all who, in their own ways, in their own time, have come to see how they can serve you, in this church and in your church throughout the world in their gifts and talents.

Gifts and talents received through the holy spirit, revealed in the son and delighted in by the father. God, in trinity, one in three and three in one.

Amen

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