Kena Hawkins Newkirk

Holy God,

On this day of celebrating your love, we lift to you the women who have been a mother to us, those who nourished us, taught us, and comforted us. Bless the women who gave us birth, blessed the women who have raised us, and bless those beautiful, strong women of faith who have been mothering us along the way.

We have seen your face in any woman who has been to us a mother, in a teacher or volunteer or neighbor or colleague or coach, in her face we have seen your light and your love and we give thanks.

And we give thanks for all the mothers in Christ who have outrun us to our Father’s house. We know their prayers for us are unceasing before your throne.

We call forth your compassion upon every mother who has unknowingly caused pain and suffering, by what they have done or left undone. And, so we lift to you our mothers, so imperfect, also so wounded by this world. We, too, are imperfect humans dependent on your grace. Where we have failed because we did not know better, forgive us, and help us to forgive ourselves.

We lift up mothers who are tired and overwhelmed, burned out by our society’s expectation of what motherhood must be. We lament the strife we impose on each other when we look down upon a working mom, thinking she must love her children less or when we shame a stay-at-home-mom, ignoring that our whole community benefits from her unpaid labor. God, we feel weak when asking for help and we feel foolish for rejecting it, thinking we have to do it all.

We lift up every mother who has yet to receive her hoped-for-child and for every mother who has lost her hoped-for-child. For the death of a child on both sides of birth we ask your comfort. For the death even of an adult child is still painful, as you, dear God, know so intimately. Receive your sons and daughters even if they never took a breath in this world, for those named and those whose name is known only by you.

We lift to you the heart of every mother who has watched her child suffer hunger, every woman who had been a victim of abuse, every person who stands in protest against a world that massacres children and renames them “collateral damage.”

We are grateful, Lord, that you have showed us mothering kindness. As a mother cannot forget her child neither can you forget us. In our distress you offer us comfort, like a hen sheltering her brood chicks, like a bear defending her cubs, like the tender embrace of woman teaching her child to walk and catching her when she falls. Your love never fails, and so, mothering God, we cry out saying

Our Father…

Good Shepherd,

There are certaiy a lot of voices echoing around the pasture. Voices that claim to have our best interests at heart.

There are those in this pasture who claim to offer peace and prosperity, but it seems that peace would come at the end of a sowrd.

We’ve heard the sound of voices claiming to offer health and healing, sold at just the right price.

And when the lights go out, and the world seems darkest, there’s that voice of fear that drifts from the shadows.

Still, among all these voices, your voice is the one that calls us; it rises above the din to assure us in times of need, want, and fear.

The Lord God is our shepherd, and we shall not be in want.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow your voice, covering us in your grace.

May we dwell in your house, all of our days, and respond to your voice using the words Jesus taught us saying…

Our Father

God of our nighttime conversations. Of our whispered prayers and twilight longings—Lord of our wondering, and Lord of our wandering.

We approach you with desperate questions, seeking satisfying answers.

How can anyone be born again?

What is the kingdom of heaven like?

Who, then, can be saved?

In our restless hours, and in our quiet darkness, our words and our worries rise up to meet you.

And there, in midair, they are met with your beautiful truth: our questions overwhelmed by eternal power. For God so loved the world that he gave his son.

Oh, lord, that despite injustice, violence and war, you still love the world.

Seeking answers, we are met with love, and seeking assurance, we are met with a call to believe.

So, God, in the wake of this beautiful collision between heaven and earth, we leave before you the hurting, the sick, the lonely, and the anxious. May they experience the wholeness that only your son may provide.

We remind you of the mistreated, maligned, and marginalized. And we ask your forgiveness for that which we’ve done and left undone, which has created chaos in the darkness.

We lament with you the presence of those who are hungry or unhoused in our world. Those who have threadbare clothes that are ill-equipped to protect them, and those without a reliable source of water.

And, Lord, we lift up to you our warring and violent ways. May our conflicts be subsumed in your glorious reign, oh, Prince of Peace.

We ask this in the name of Jesus, who taught us to love, to believe, and to pray

Our Father…

Holy and Merciful God,

We confess that we are violent people, more intent on winning than understanding. We point the finger at those who use guns while harboring hate and resentment in our own hearts, even as Jesus taught us that such hatred is the same as murder.

Forgive us, and fix us.
We pray for shared humanity, remembering that violence demeans us all.

We humbly ask for your comfort for those who have been victims of violence, unfortunately, and especially those who have made headlines this week:

The students of Evergreen High School,
Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk.

We lift up whole countries torn apart by violence, such as Ukraine, the Middle East, North Africa, and Nepal.

We needn’t continue to live this way. God, make us instruments of your peace.
— Let our grief not harden into hatred but soften our hearts toward empathy.

— Let our prayers move us toward peacemaking, serving neighbors, and advocating for protection and justice with humility and grace.

— Let our indignation not be performative politics but genuine human empathy that leads to change – in our own personal actions and our national experience.

For the sake of our families, communities, and country, help us to address the culture of contempt and tribalism inherent within us.

Give us clarity and understanding beyond our vision to see truth in the midst of addictive algorithms, selective bias, and a relentless news cycle.

Inspire our leaders to work toward policies that prioritize human flourishing over flashy rhetoric, encourage peace over polarization, and enable meaningful dialogue over endless discord.

We need your healing balm, your Holy Spirit, to empower us to acknowledge the inherent dignity of every human being as a child of God.

We place our hope in you.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have Mercy

Prayer of Intersession OR Pastoral Prayer

Holy God this day help us be mindful of the margin in our lives. We have a tendency to schedule our movements from the moment that we wake up to the moment we lay our head down at night.  The small spaces in between we tend to fill with distraction and entertainment, useless worry or bitter obsessions. Holy God we are more concerned with the work that we have done than the good that we have left undone. We pride ourselves on our accomplishments and not on the moments of love and care we share with those in need. For this Lord we are sorry and we humbly repent.

Father, we ask for a holy interruptions in our lives. We ask for the unexpected in breaking of your Kingdom in the loud in public spectacle of our society. And we ask for it in the quiet, humble, private moments. We look forward to the in breaking of your Kingdom with peace, healing, compassion, justice and mutual understanding.

Jesus, we ask that heaven touch earth, and that earth might reach out and touch heaven – In the same way that the an unnamed daughter reached out and touched your garment that you reached out and touched the unnamed daughter. Embrace our death bound bodies and give to us new life.  Interrupt us with your holy presence and allow us to emerge transformed.

We ask this by the power of you Holy Spirit, living within us, who empowers us to call out using the prayer your Son taught us saying:

Our Father…

Lord,

We come to you now, on this Memorial Day. It is a time in our country when we paused to recognize those who have laid down their lives in service to our country.

Lord, we have a great deal of thanks to those who saw fit to lay down their lives for us.

And yet, Lord, there are men and women who bled and died in service and protection of this country. Only to have us dishonor their memory by allowing the persistence of violence here at home.

Lord, we are again are shaken by the scourge of gun violence. We, who are your people, lay flags on graves in honor of those killed and lower flags to half mast in morning for those who have been murdered. The violence in our country seems so unrelenting

Jesus, we your followers admit that we have done very little to be peacemakers in our own lives. We escalate conflict in our places of work. We fail to build bridges within our of schools. We neglect to build community living right next-door. We even fan the flames of division in you very own church.

Holy Spirit, forgive us our failures. Abide within us. Empower us to lay down our idols, our idols of politics, tribalism, consumerism, elitism, racism, and sexism. May we exchange these idols for the mantle of peace. For hearts filled with love. For hands eager to do the work of your kingdom.

Give us courageous leaders. Beholden to your true wisdom, and ready to protect the most vulnerable in our society, rather than the powerful, the wealthy, and the entitled.

May it be truly said of us, that as far as it depends on us, we will live in peace. Even as we work for peace in this world. Lord, living in peace is the greatest honor we can bestow on the fallen, who traded their own lives.

We ask all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for us, and encourages us to put away our swords, or else beat them into ploughshares.

Amen.