The Reverend Christine V. Hides

Holy God, Sower of Abundant Grace,

The heavens declare your glory. The earth reveals your handiwork. Day after day and night after night, we worship you, O God. Your ways are true, your commandments enlightening, your love endures forever.

On this summer day we come together, grateful for dazzling sunshine, and replenishing rain, which provides for our nourishment, the sustenance of our life. Row after row of crops now flourish along our midwestern highways, famer’s market tables are growing weighted with corn and tomatoes, beans, and lettuce. And today especially we are grateful for blueberries, which taste of sunlight and summer memories, the taste of pure joy. The fruits of the earth reveal your provision for our life and the everyday miracles of your creation.

You Lord, plant righteousness, love, and compassion in the soil of our hearts and minds.

Where trouble threatens to devour the seeds of hope, guide us, and protect us.

In the places where we have become hardened to our neighbors, soften us, with compassion and generosity.

Revive those of us who are weak with grief and illness as a summer rain quenches the earth.

Blow forgiveness and reconciliation like a cool breeze to refresh our heated and broken hearts.

With you, through you, and in you O God, may we find a life of gratitude and service sweeter than summer honey.

Lord let your justice and mercy shine bright in our community, and in our world, in the halls of power, in the most desperate of situations. Let nothing escape the light of your love. Fill us with hope for the fullness of your reign, when conflict will cease, when all are fed in the generous sharing of your abundant harvest, when all is made new in Christ who teaches us to pray: Our Father….