Sunday morning prayers

Photo by Priyanka Karmakar on Unsplash

Sunday Morning prayers

Genesis 18:1-10a

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

July 17, 2022

Written by Carrie Houston

I wrote this prayer for Sunday morning's service. The text for the morning was Genesis 18:1-10, the story of Abraham meeting three strangers and then offering water, bread, and food.  The very last verse is the promise that Sarah will have a baby. 

What struck me the most about this passage was not the fact that a 99 year old woman would still be able to create life, but how Abraham's hospitality to these strangers was only made possible because of the work of someone else. In this case, he forces his wife to make and bake bread to feed the strangers, and gets his servants to do the dirty work of slaughtering a calf, all so he would have something to present to strangers.

It struck me that so often there are people we don't even consider part of our lives, because they are invisible to us. Like the people that pick our food, clean our floors, ship our online purchases. These are very much alive and breathing humans, with lives and families. They are people with hopes and dreams.

My prayer was written with this in mind, so that we could see those we wish not to see, those we choose not to see and those who blend in to the background of our lives. May we see them as people who are worthy of being heard. 

God, 

Our world is full of invisible people. 

People who are left out of the story, often times intentionally because they don’t fit inside the “normal".  

These invisible people who we assume will always be there to do the jobs we don’t want to do. 

Voices that are silenced just because of their gender, the color of their skin, the person that they love. 

The ones we have devalued because of their political opinion, the neighborhood they live in or their profession.

God,

Give us ears to hear them. Ears that will really listen. 

Give us the eyes to see them.  Eyes that will really see them. 

Give us the courage to amplify their roles in our corporate human story, as we fight for a more just, a more equal, a more fair society that values the colorful variety of humanity. 

In the busyness of our everyday lives, with our heads down, just trying to make it to 5 o’clock, help us to step outside of the comfort of the status quo to look up and see who we are excluding.  Help us raise their voices, pull up chairs for them at the table, and envision a world where inclusion is a beautiful thing, and not a threatening thing. 

Help us be a part in making your heaven a reality on earth. 

Amen.