Pause for Prayer: SUNDAY 9/6

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This Labor Day weekend, Lord,
I'm grateful for the world you created
and that I, too, am the work of your hands:
    you formed my inmost being, 
    you knit me in my mother's womb...  Psalm 139 

 

How can it be 

that you took the time,
    before time was,
to imagine my being,
to consider for even a moment
that I should exist:
    to conceive of me
    so long before I was conceived?

 

And then from my parents' love
you fashioned and made me

    in their image, yes,  

        but first in yours,
and gave me a soul 

    you'd given no other
and breathed in me the Spirit's gift,

    the breath of your own life...

 

How great are your works, O Lord, my God,

and how grateful am I 

that this life of mine
is truly the work of your hands...

 

And who am I, Lord, 

that you should ever be mindful of me
that you should ever care for me,

that you should eternally love me?

 
Yet you've crowned me 

with glory and honor:
    your love, my crown,
    your mercy, my glory,
    your grace, my unmerited honor...

 

Without you, Lord, 

    I am nothing;
without you,
    I am not...

 

You created me, Lord,
    and so it is now that I,  

        the work of your hands,
offer to you
    the work of my hands,
knowing that all that I have to give,

    from the first was your gift to me...

 

Every good thought of mine, O God,
    and every imagined word, 
    every possible plan I dream,
    and every gift I offer
is first the work 

    of your Spirit within me 

and yet you're pleased when I lift as gift
    what was your gift to me

        to begin with...

 

On this Labor Day weekend

I offer you, Lord, 

    all the work I've ever done, 

        and all that's yet mine to do

and I pray you accept it,

    knowing I'm humbled 

that I have a share in the work you do
    and you have a share in mine...

 

And I pray for those who have no work
    and for those whose work 

        is too much to bear:
lift up the unemployed, O Lord 
    and lighten the load of the weary...

 

I praise you, O God

    for the work you've begun

        in me, in my neighbor and all the world: 

bring all of your work to completion, O Lord,

    Creator of all that is good... 

Amen.
 

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