Pastoral Prayer for Easter Day (inspired by 1 Cor. 15))

Holy God:

We give you praise with hearts full of thanksgiving on this, the greatest of days, the day your Son rose
from the dead to show us that death had been destroyed. You have given us the perfect sign of your
faithfulness, you miracle working power, and your love that gives us ultimate victory.

We confess to you that deep in our hearts, the reality of the continuing power of death continues to
weigh us down and limit our ability to celebrate fully. We feel the power of death in our bodies. We still grieve over those who have died ahead of us. We experience the power of death drawing our souls into the dust. We struggle to overcome the sin within us. We struggle to overcome cynicism and a gnawing sense that our world is corrupt beyond repair.

Help us to see the many small and great demonstrations of your life-giving power overcoming the
blasphemous claims of death all around us. Help us to believe in our bones that the resurrection is not
some beautiful fairy tale of something that happened ago, but a demonstration of the way your life
renews all life. Help us to believe beyond our seeing that you are even now swallowing up every kind of death in your victory. Help us to live in every moment so that we will spread your life and participate in the renewing of everything.

Most of all, give each of us new life. To those who have never been made alive by your spirit, may
this Easter Sunday be the beginning of a new birth to a life lived with you, a life of power, joy, and
confidence, a life lived in wonder and awe of your miracle working power. For those of us who have
grown weary and lost our easter vision, help us to feel a fresh surge of your resurrection power making
everything dead within us alive again.

You said that if the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwelt in us, he would give new life to our mortal bodies. So bring healing to every broken body, joy to every broken spirit, reconciliation to every broken relationship, and peace to our broken world.

Amen.