Pentecost 9 Prayer of the Day

The Prayer of the Day (Collect) is addressed to the Heavenly Father.  “Though we do not deserve your goodness, still you provide for all our needs of body and soul.”  The gospel lesson features the time Jesus fed five thousand men, plus women and children, with five loaves and two fish borrowed from the disciples’ picnic cooler.  After everyone had eaten their fill, the disciples, ever the want not waste not sort, picked up twelve baskets of left overs.  So, they ended up with far more than they had begun.

As the Prayer of the Day continues, it focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit.  We ask the Father to give us the Holy Spirit that we might do three things.  1. Acknowledge your gifts.  We have nothing that is not from the Father.  2. Give thanks for all Your benefits.  That would include a boundless list beginning with life, and air, and water and food and our bodily functions and on and on including family and friends.  Remember Martin Luther’s list in the catechism?  3. Serve You in willing obedience.  Notice, it says, willing obedience.  Not “Yeah, yeah God, if you insist, I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”

We pray for all of this “through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

A lot to think about tomorrow in those 30 seconds of prayer. Worth talking about, maybe in place of the sermon.