Pour your Spirit upon us

Just back from a really stimulating day with other chaplains at the Clinical Pastoral Education Retreat to Dromantine. It fell to our group to lead worship at the beginning and for it I wrote the following responsive prayer based on the first part of Isaiah 61 (I came home to discover that Stocki had referred to the latter part of the same chapter in his Surmise today promoting the upcoming Four Corners Festival - it is a truly inspiring chapter of scripture... perhaps that is why Jesus chose to read it to his home Synagogue in Nazareth.) I may have written it for a group of chaplains, but, if the Pope is correct in defining the contemporary church as a "field hospital" for those wounded in the world (a concept which we explored today) then it is an appropriate prayer for all those who are part of the church...

Sovereign Lord pour your Spirit upon us,

Anoint us to bring good news to the poor and the powerless

Wherever we may encounter them on our journeys:
Send us out to bring healing to the heartbroken.

May we proclaim pardon for the imprisoned,

Whatever form of captivity people find themselves entrapped in:

May we announce that this is the year of God’s grace.
May we bring comfort to all who mourn and are weighed down with grief

May we bring bouquets of blessing in place of funeral wreaths

the perfume of joy in place of the aroma of death
and clothe them in praise in place of deep despair.
Sovereign Lord pour your Spirit upon us. AMEN

Shalom

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