A green prayer and sermon

Judith Allinson, CEL's web editor writes:-

Today (3 July 2011) I attended Grassington Methodist Church, in the Yorkshire Dales.

I was delighted when we prayed this prayer, written by the visiting local preacher, Dr Archie McAdam.

Then I realised the children's story and sermon which followed was important too.

Lord Jesus we are here again to worship you
And to tell you how we admire this world created by
Our God, Father, Son and Spirit,
By you our Holy Trinity

We love the world that we see
We love the world that we see through the poet's eyes
Where its kingfishers catch fire and dragonflies draw flame
With the fishes that twitch in your greeny streams
And weary cows wending slowly o'er the lea.

What a brilliant place this all is, Lord
With your mountains and hills,
With the greens and the browns, the fields and the moors

Blessed be your dappled things
Your rolling plains and your reef knolls
Your water and your waterfalls
Everything adds up to beautiful ecosystems changing and developing
We thank you for everyone who struggles to preserve
The beauties of this world

And Lord, we have to confess again that we do not do enough
We do not do enough to gruntle our families
We find ourselves doing hurtful things
We intend good things and they break up as we try
The good we intend we do not do
Yet the bad we would not is what we find ourselves at.

Lord God, Lord Jesus
Protect us from our destructive selves
Heal our hurting hearts
Bring us into you kingdom of rest and loving generosity
Teach us to love
For we thank you for your blessing and forgiveness
As we try to do better.

We ask this prayer in the name of Jesus
who taught his disciples when they pray to say:-

Our Lord's Prayer.

***********************

The children's story (in a nutshell) was

2-4-6-8
Who do we appreciate?
Micah 6 - 8

Micah 6-8
What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy (and loving caring) and to walk humbly with thy God

The sermon was mostly on Aung San Suu Kyi's Reith Lecture on 28 June - www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/reith
and about what life is like for dissidents in many countries - which was somewhat disturbing.

He asked who of us has access to the internet and encouraged us to support some of the petitions organised by http://www.avaaz.org/en/

In our prayers we asked God to give us a thankful heart.