Lord of all eternity, in
whose hands are all our times, we come today to
give you our gifts, as people have come for millennia with gifts to
offer in your service.
We are the rich and we are
the poor, we are the strong and we are the weak, we are the powerful and we are
the disempowered; and we bring the offering of our lives before you for
transformation and redemption, for the salvation of the world.
So we bring you our gold;
our money, our power, and our strength. And we rejoice that you receive our
offering.
Too often in our world
money, power and strength create corruption, coercion, and catastrophe.
We pray today for all those
who are seduced by the mythology of their own success.
We pray for politicians and
presidents, for monarchs and dictators, for those who have inherited wealth and
for those who have acquired it. We pray for those who rule over kingdoms, and
whose power is beholden to money and strength.
We pray especially for
America, with the forthcoming transition of power, and we ask that those who
will hold power will not lose sight of the responsibility they bear for the
weak and the vulnerable.
Just as magi brought wealth
and power to your cradle, and you accepted the gift, may those with such gifts
to bring in our world discover your willingness to receive and transform their
offering.
And we recognise that we
ourselves have to live with the responsibilities of our own place in that
world. Those of us with jobs, savings, and houses need to find in you a way of
living well with our wealth, and so we bring our gold before you.
And we do so in faith that
you are God revealed in human form. Our offering of ourselves is not merely an
act of self transformation, it is an act of worship to the one in whom all of
life finds it's beginning, its end, and its redemption. You are love incarnate,
and we worship you with all that we are and all that we have. We bring our
offering of frankincense to the God of creation.
And as we do so, we hear
the challenge that you bring to all other claims on our allegiance.
The clamour of the false
gods is strong, and all too easily we are seduced into offering them our
worship.
May we learn to resist the
lures of materialism, the deceptions of individualism, and the compelling drive
to competitiveness and violence.
So we pray for those who
are trapped in servitude to these gods of our society, that demand ever-greater
tribute, but never offer release. May the world discover the freedom that is
found in the God of love who gives freely to all who seek. May the world
discover the path to peace that opens through following the way of Jesus.
And so we worship you as
our saviour, and as the saviour of the world. We bring our offering of myrrh to
the one who dies that the world might be redeemed. We proclaim our faith that
it is only in and through your life, death, and resurrection that our own lives
acquire meaning.
And so we pray for all
those seeking meaning to their lives; for searchers and seekers, for the
curious and the questioners. May they hear in your story, the path towards
freedom, love, and eternal acceptance.
We pray for our friends and
our families, for those we meet and those we avoid. Help us to remember that it
is not our calling to save others, but rather that it is our vocation to live
out our own salvation before the world, always pointing to the one in whom the
God of love is made fully known.
In weakness and in
strength, in poverty and in power, in loneliness and in love, we offer our
prayers to the one in whom all our times are held.
Amen.
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