Prayers of the People: Blue Christmas


Here’s another prayer of intercession for a Blue Christmas (or Longest Night) worship service.  This one comes from a service prepared by the All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta.

Prayer of Intercession for Blue Christmas

God, we come to you as Christmas dawns with pain growing inside us.
As the nights have been growing longer,
so has the darkness wrapped itself around our hearts.
In this season of our longest nights,
we offer to you the pain in our hearts,
the traumas that some of us cannot put into words. 

Loving God, hear our prayer,
And in your merciful love, answer.

Compassionate God,
there are those among us who are grieving over what might have been.
A death or loss has changed our experience of Christmas.
Once it was a special day for us too, but someone has died or moved away.
Or we have lost a job, or a cause.
We find ourselves adrift, alone, lost.
Lord help us find our way. 

Loving God, hear our prayer,
And in your merciful love, answer.

The Christmas season reminds us of all that used to be and cannot be anymore.
The memories of what was, the fears of what may be, stifle us.
All around us we hear the sounds of celebration.
But all we experience is a sense of feeling blue.
Please be near us this night.

Loving God, hear our prayer,
And in your merciful love, answer.

I invite you to offer your own intercessions and thanksgivings
either silently or aloud.

--silence--
  
The leader offers a concluding collect.

~ from Blue Christmas Service, December, 2008 prepared by the All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta. To see the whole service, click here: http://allsaintsatlanta.org/wp-content/files/Blue%20Christmas%20Service.pdf