Staying Safe and Staying Connected
Good Morning Saint Stephen’s Church,
We continue our life of daily prayer. The Lord be with you!
Today’s Prayer
Our Father, we turn to Thee in the quietness of this meditation period. It is but natural that we expose to Thee the things in us that seem most worthy and good that we may delight in Thy spirit and joy Thy heart. The unworthy and the ugly things in us we almost instinctively seek to hide, to cover up, that we may seem pleasing in Thy sight. But deep within we know that this is not enough….
Teach us to know that thy Love is so whole and so healing that nothing less than all of us can rise to meet Thine all-encompassing care. Teach us to share with Thee the good and the bad in us, the ugly and the beautiful, the clean and the sordid, the success and the failure–all, everything complete in every part. With penitence for fumblings, failures, ignorances and sins; with thanksgiving for directness, success, knowledge and rightness, we lay bare all that we are to Thy love and Thy understanding, O God our Father.
Howard Thurman, 1981. from his book, Meditations of the Heart
Howard Thurman was an influential author, theologian, and pastor. In the 1940s, he co-founded The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the first major racially integrated church in the United States. Prior to founding this church, he served as dean at the chapel of Howard University and in the same role at Boston University. He is known for being a significant theological influence on leaders of the civil rights movement. Particularly, Martin Luther King, Jr., was shaped significantly by Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited.
From Our Prayers of the People
Today, let us pray:
For the just and proper use of your creation: for the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression.
For comfort and healing for all who are affected by the Coronavirus: for physicians, nurses, and all others who minister to the sick and the suffering, may God grant them wisdom and skill, sympathy and patience, and may God keep them healthy and safe.
For all essential workers: for police, firefighters, EMTs, postal workers, sanitation workers, grocery personnel, delivery and transport workers, and all who must report to work because what they do is essential for our well-being, health, and safety.
For those on the Parish Prayer Chain Mary Frances, Jim, Eunice, Jane, Bruce, Pauline, John, Bill and Stephanie.
For those who are homebound: Stephen, Pauline, Joan, Janet and Marilyn.
Our Government Leaders: Donald Trump, President of the United States; Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State; Gary McCarthy, Mayor of Schenectady
Our Church Leaders: Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop, William Love, and Daniel Herzog our bishops; James and Dennie our priests; Pat our deacon and Allison our Lay Reader
Those who are imprisoned: those particularly vulnerable at this time, especially the women in the Schenectady County Jail.
For those in need of healing: Sid, Vicki, Jean, Cindi, Mary Frances, Debbie, Joe, Matt and Lisa.
For all the blessings of this life.
For our dioceses in the Anglican Communion: Northern Uganda (Uganda), (Nigeria), Kansas (The Episcopal Church).
For all who have died: especially Dorothy, Jean, Daisy, Barbara, Rose, Margaret and Mary.
For one another.
Something to share
Possible Answers to Prayer
Your petitions—though they continue to bear
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties—despite their constant,relatively narrow scope and inadvertent
entertainment value—nonetheless serve
to bring your person vividly to mind.Your repentance—all but obscured beneath
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more
conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.Your intermittent concern for the sick,
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes
recognizable to me, if not to them.Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly
righteous indignation toward the many
whose habits and sympathies offend you—these must burn away before you’ll apprehend
Scott Cairns
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.
News & Updates
How to be an Anti Racist – Dr Kendi will speak on July 27th, next Monday, through Proctors tech system, and then there will be a 21 day anti racist follow up challenge with emails and readings sent every day to all who sign up. Schenectady Clergy Against Hate, among many others is a community partner for this event. More information will be forthcoming.
Reminders
If you have an update/news, a prayer or poem or something inspirational you would like us to share with the congregation, please send it to us. Please also send us any prayer requests. We will incorporate these into the Morning Prayers as best we can.
If need a prayerbook, and are not in a position to purchase one, please contact me: james.ross.mcd@gmail.com. I will make sure you have your own Book of Common Prayer.
Prayerbook Morning Prayer in Zoom – each morning. Join Dennie and me for an inter-active service of Morning Prayer at 9 am. Time to bring your prayer concerns will be provided. (contact me for the link: james.ross.mcd@gmail.com)
If you did not receive a phone call in the last few weeks from a member of the Vestry and you would like to be added to the communication list, please let me know (james.ross.mcd@gmail.com) and share with me the best telephone number(s) where we can reach you. We will add you to the list right away.
Our church campus is closed, except for our Eucharistic Ingathering on Sundays at 9:00 am. Please see our website for further information: https://st-stephens.church. All other parish meetings and gatherings are canceled and postponed until further notice.
Our goal is for all of us to stay in touch and connected in this time of isolation.
Share this news, and spread some love, not the virus!
Irish Blessing
May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be at your back,
May the sun shine upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.
Be of good courage. We are in this together, and we will be together again soon. God bless you and may God be with us in the days ahead.
Peace,
James+