Here’s a pastoral prayer for
Mother’s Day from Linda LeBron. It was
posted on LiturgyLink.
A Prayer for Mother’s Day
O God of Love, all other loves
excelling,
We are privileged to be your
eternal family, to be children of such a parent, loving us so perfectly. On
this beautiful Mother’s Day morning we come to you celebrating the gift of
family. We see your glory and your wisdom in the diversity of that gift—a
diversity that has always existed. We pray for small families like Elizabeth
and Zechariah and their precious only son, John, and for large families like
Jacob’s, with his twelve sons. We ask your blessing on multigenerational
families like Timothy’s, whose mother and grandmother raised him in the
faith. Bless single person families like
Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. We pray especially for broken
families like King David’s. And for those like Ruth and Naomi who came through
the pain of loss to establish new family ties.
We see in your Holy Word and in
our unholy world all kinds of families with every sort of challenge, joy,
failure, and pain. You haven’t given up on families, Lord, so help us to
support them in all their shapes and situations. Families are not perfect
places, Lord, no matter how hard we try, because we are imperfect people. We
need your kind of love for each other. We need your kind of clean-slate
forgiveness for each other and that’s hard. There are folks whose greatest
hurts were family blows, who just can’t imagine forgiving or forgetting. We
come together to ask You to be healing damaged relationships and painful
memories. Show us how to deal with our grief and regrets and anger. Make us
grateful when we have been parented wisely and well. Remind us all that we
always have You and this covenant family, a home away from home. You are like a
mother who will not abandon the child in her arms, like a father who runs to
welcome the prodigal home.
For You are love, and when we
love, we are like You. Lord, we would reflect the love to our earthly family
and to your eternal family and to your whole precious creation which You loved
enough to send your only Son to save. Greater love has no one. And it is to You
and in His dear name we pray. Amen.
~ written by Linda LeBron, retired Certified
Director of Christian Education and 2009 APCE Educator of the Year. Posted on liturgylink. http://www.liturgylink.net/2013/05/06/a-prayer-for-mothers-day/
