All Saints Prayer

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory. We praise you for heaven's glories...for sins forgiven and death destroyed...for the promise that all tears shall be wiped away...We praise you for the great company of the faithful, those whom we have loved and those we have never known. For those whose home is with You in eternity, where all we have willed, or dreamed or hoped of good shall exist. We praise You for earth's glories, for beautiful things and people's kindness and patient love and lively memory and friends...long friends and new friends, all the many friends. Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of Your glory.

Lord of the heavnes and Lord of earth, take all our disappointments, all our shattered dreams, all those unfinished futures...take all our sourness and bitterness and despair-laced outlooks...take all the places where hope has been forgotten or is hidden or seems impossible and be New Light...be Fresh birth.... Be the green shoot that rises from a dry earth and in slender beauty, speaks again of trust in You...

We belong to You this day, O God, all the saints and all the sinners, all the departed and all that live here, we belong to You, all that expect and all that anguish, we belong to You ...and on this day, we give thanks for Your Power over death, and for Your Power to live...Hear our prayer in the name of the Risen Christ, Amen.

From worship at First Baptist on November 1, 2009.