On this Labor Day evening, I find myself giving thanks for time with friends, for backpacks filled and blessed, for time at the beach, for our young people, and for peach pie and ice cream...that list gives you a little insight into my Labor Day weekend. What is it that our Psalm inspires you to give thanks for?
Friends, tonight let us pray for all who are returning to school...
Lord, we know you hold the future and walk with us even now on this unpredictable path of a new school year in the midst of a pandemic. We trust you work through the most difficult of seasons and never abandon us to navigate life’s challenges alone.
Loving God, as our community, our families, our children make final preparations for the return to school, we come to you in prayer. We give you thanks for students, teachers, administrators, custodians, bus drivers, and and all who make up school communities. We pray for their health and for their strength.
Be with our children, help them as they begin a new year of learning and growing.
May their minds and their pencils be sharp. May their erasers help them to remember that mistakes are okay.
God, thank you for glue sticks and homework folders and laptops and crisp new notebooks waiting to be filled; thank you for schools and libraries and teachers; thank you for gift of curiosity and for your Wisdom that is all around.
We pray in the name of your Son, who left his parents so he could sit and learn at the feet of the rabbis in the temple.
Amen.
Psalm 100
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
come into his presence with singing.
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name.
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
**Prayer adapted from Presbyterian Outlook and the SALT team.