At the request of Mrs Pastor, here's another prayer* thread for the city of New Orleans, as things apparently spin out of control down yonder.
Out of the depths we cry.
Hear our voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of our supplications!
We wait for you,
and in your word we hope.
For with you there is steadfast love,
and with you is great power to redeem.
(Psalm 130, ed.)
Holy One, we are in your hands;
we want to open ourselves to your perspective,
your grace and light.
And yet our feelings lock us into the present.
We offer them to you now:
Our shock at the news of Hurricane Katrina's wrath,
the numbness--it still doesn't seem real.
Our sadness at losing towns and cities,
the staggering realization of the truth of
devastation,
the pain as our hearts ask: "Why?"
These are some of the things we feel,
the questions that force their way into our consciousness.
We offer them to you, and ask you to comfort us and lead us into doing what is right.
Make us aware of the depth of love,
and help us ground our lives on it,
so that in our turmoil we will still have it as our foundation;
in suffering we will know its presence:
know that it is in suffering that we most fully realize the presence of love in our lives.
May we know healing in our grief,
peace in confusion,
love's strength in our frailty.
...
A city we love has been torn from us.
Expectations the years once held have vanished.
The mystery of death and destruction has stricken us.
You know the lives we live and the deaths we die--
woven so strangely of purpose and of chance,
of reason and of the irrational,
of strength and of frailty,
of happiness and of pain.
Into your hands we commend the fate of New Orleans, Southern Mississippi and Alabama.
No earthly thing you have made is without eternal meaning.
No earthly fate is beyond your redeeming.
Through your grace
that can do far more than we can think or imagine,
fulfill in these areas your purpose that reaches beyond time and death.
Lead them from strength to strength,
and fit them for love and service.
Into your hands also we commit our lives.
You alone make us to dwell in safety.
Whom, finally, have we on earth or in heaven but you?
Help us to know the measure of our days, and how frail we are.
Save our minds from despair and our hearts from fear,
and guard and guide us with your peace.