January Prayer

Father of all hope and promise, we begin a new year with anxious uncertainty of what lies ahead. So many of the trials and tribulations we have endured from this pandemic are still with us and the Covid-complicated challenges of daily life for so many still remain. We pray for our children whose education is interrupted and diminished by remote learning and the effects of limited social interaction. We pray for parents struggling to find childcare so that they can work to provide for their families. We pray for those who fall ill to the disease and those caring for them—and those mourning the loss of loved ones. We pray for people separated by long and short distances due to quarantine and desire for medical safety.

We ask for your strength and grace for those working in the medical professions as they confront growing patient counts from Covid variants and the other health needs that are always with us.

We are also given daily reminders of the cultural, political, racial, and ideological influences that continue to divide us. We pray that all may brought together by the blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ and all walls of division be broken down and the hostilities between us overcome by His peace.

You sent Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior into the world to bring reconciliation, healing, and wholeness. And, because of Him we can enter this new year knowing that there is no condition or situation in this world that our Lord Jesus can’t love us through. We pray that we are filled with the certain hope that all can be conquered with the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and that we may be his faithful ambassadors and disciples to these and all other needs of this world in this new year. It is in Jesus’ Holy Name we make this our prayer. Amen.

Contributed by Jim Witherow