Patient, loving, and challenging God. We thank you for our many blessings. We are fortunate to live in a free and supporting country. We thank you for our opportunities and numerous physical comforts. We thank you for the beauty and bounty of the earth. We thank you for the warmth of summer and the favorable harvest weather. We thank you for family and friends and people who have really cared for us over our lives--people who have made a real difference to us even if we didn't deserve their gifts. God, we are thankful for our community and the volunteers who make our community a rich, safe, and vibrant place to live.

We are thankful for our church...this community of a caring family who gather for worship, fellowship, and education so that we might by nurtured and empowered to be ministers and witnesses of God's love throughout the world.

Caring and comforting God, we ask now for your support to those people today who cannot attend worship because of sickness, debility I or inopportunity. Comfort and strengthen them to face the world with faith and hope.

We pray this morning for those in physical pain--those suffering from disease or injury .We pray for those suffering from emotional pain that they might find relief and fulfillment. We pray for those imprisoned by addictions and those whose lives are empty and meaningless. May their suffering end and their lives be filled with hope and meaning.

God we pray for ourselves that we may hear your call to us. We pray that we can pull off our blankets of selfishness and get up to follow the call you offer us. And now in the quietness of this moment let us pause and make some personal petitions to you God--about those who are dear to us and need help and about ourselves as we try to hear the call you are offering to us and consider how we will answer that call.

And now let us sing together the prayer that Jesus us taught us…