Holy God:
We thank you on this day that you have given us the great grace and high privilege of naming you as our Father. At great price to yourself, you loved us when unlovable, you made peace with us through the blood of your Son, you humbled yourself to stoop low enough to meet us where we are. You gave us your name, an eternal inheritance, new life, and gave us the gift of this, your family. Our Father, we are grateful.
We are grateful to you, also, for our earthly fathers. We thank you for those who gave us life, for those who have mentored and guided us, for those who have been spiritual fathers and taught us the faith. We thank you for those who have been fathers to the fatherless. For all who have a father’s love and have shown us a father’s love, we are eternally grateful.
Help our Fathers to love their children well. Help our father to know our gratitude. Strengthen families. So often, fathers feel overlooked and underappreciated. Help them to keep an open heart, to always love, support, care for, and teach their children well, to demonstrate the faithfulness that can be learned best from you alone.
As our nation reels from a horrific crime committed against our sister church and its people, we pray that you would comfort the families of the slain. We pray that the people of Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston would feel your embrace and the prayers of the nation and world as they gather for worship even now. Use this horrendous crime to allow the witness of the martyrs to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Use even this horrific crime as an opportunity to heal the woundedness and division in our nation, for our only hope is in you, great God of love.
Amen.
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