Assurance

Eternal God, our Father, we pray for a real sense of your presence as we bow together in prayer. We cannot see you with the physical eye, nor hear you with the physical ear - but we believe you are as real as the sun that shines with such splendor, and the thunder that roars. All of us at the best moments of our lives have had a sense of your presence with us and you voice speaking to us.
We are shamed today - ashamed that we have put more store by the world of time and sense than we have by our relationship to you and your Kingdom. Come to us today and show us again how life in all its beauty can be ours - a life of meaning and purpose, including all the world and heaven, too. May we give you back the life we owe - which we have tried to keep for ourselves, but have so miserably failed in trying - may we give you back the life we owe, that in your ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be.
We know, our Father, that we live in a time of great trial and distress. But somehow we feel that you are shaking the earth in order that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Your fires burn in order to reveal the pure gold. Help us to see our lives and our times through the eyes of faith and the mind of Christ.
We pray that the Church of which we are a part, may reaffirm our mission to the world - the world around us and the world beyond us. Save us, O Lord, from being little. Give us a great and expanding love which opens our eyes to the need around us - a love which suffers long and is kind; which is not happy with evil but only with the truth; a love which never gives up and which never fails.
We believe our prayers can reach the bodies and minds of those who are sick; the loneliness of those who are far away; the alienation of those who hate and cannot forgive; the burden of those who are weary and heavy laden. O Lord, let your word find its mark at the point of our deepest need this hour.
All that we ask is in Jesus' name. Amen