I had the privilege of praying in my Church this morning for our Mothers, Mothers Day, our Church and the World.
Heavenly Father,
We come before you this morning, knowing that today is a day that carries many things at once — joy and sorrow, gratitude and grief, satisfaction and longing — and we thank you that you are a God large enough to hold them all, and tender enough to hold each of us within them.
For many of us, today is a day of celebration. Our Mothers are honoured, our children are gathered close, and love is present and warm and near. I pray this morning as one of those for whom the day is full — as a father, with a family who love Jesus, and I do not take that for granted for a moment. I know what a gift it is — and I know it is a gift, and not a given.
We thank you, Father, for the mothers among us — for their patience that outlasts ours, for their sacrifice that we so often only understand long after it has been made, for the fierce and quiet love that has shaped so many of us into who we now are. We celebrate them today, and we are grateful, and we ask that you would bless them.
But Father, we know that for others among us, this day is harder to inhabit. There are those in this room who carry grief that this morning will press against — whose mothers have gone, whose relationships are fractured or strained or impossibly far away. There are those who longed to be mothers and are not. There are mothers among us who have lost children — who know an ache that this day will reopen, and a name they will carry quietly through the service this morning as they do every day.
There are those who long to be close and find themselves distant, and those who are distant and do not yet know how to come home. We lift them all to you. Be near to the broken-hearted, Lord, as you have promised to be. Let this place — and this hour — be a refuge wide enough for their sorrow as well as our celebration, because both belong here, and both belong to you.
We pray too for those whose mothers have gone to glory, and we thank you for the unshakable hope we have in Jesus — that death is not the end, that the grave does not have the final word, and that we will see them again. And Father, we hold before you something heavier still: those whose mothers, or whose loved ones, died without us knowing whether they had come to a saving faith in your Son. That is a weight we cannot carry, and we do not pretend to. We trust your justice, Lord, because it is perfect. We trust your mercy, because it is wider than ours. And we leave them in the hands of the only one who knows them truly and loves them better than we ever could.
Father, we pray now for our own church. We pray for growth — and we ask for it on every level. We pray for new families to find their home among us, for new faces to become familiar ones, for our community to deepen and widen at once. We thank you for the way you have already answered this prayer over the last 12 months, and we know you will continue to do so.
But more than that, Lord, we pray for new people to come to a saving faith in your Son. Numbers without faith is not the growth we are asking for. Grow us in depth as well as in breadth. Do the slow and patient work of sanctification in us. Edify us through your word and by your Spirit. Let the gospel do its work in our own lives first, before we presume to take it anywhere else.
We pray for our kids ministry — for the leaders who give their Sundays to it, for the children who are being shaped by it, and for seeds being planted now that may not bear fruit for decades but will bear fruit, by your grace. We thank you for our kids club and the work faithfully done by the Bells and the Siu’s to make it happen, and the support they have been given from people all around our church family. We pray for the teachers who faithfully give their energy and time every week during term to help lead, grow, disciple and mentor our children during Kids Church.
We pray for our new planned ESL class, and the open door it represents to our community. Let it be more than a service, Lord — let it be a place of genuine welcome, of friendship, of dignity, and in your timing, a place where people encounter the love of Christ in word and not only in deed. And we pray for those who are coming to Christianity Explained — for hearts that are softening, for questions that are honest, for eyes that are beginning to open. Bring some of them, Lord, before it ends, into a real and saving knowledge of Jesus.
We pray for our denomination, Father, as it wrestles in this season with difficult questions on many fronts. Give it wisdom — careful, humble, biblical wisdom — as it thinks through the role of elder, and what faithfulness to your word looks like in the life of the church. And give it the same wisdom as it looks for new and faithful ways to include women in the decision-making and the governance of your church. Hold it together where it is tempted to fracture. Guard it from the pride that grasps and the cowardice that retreats. Lead it, Lord, into the truth — because the truth is yours to give, and yours alone.
And Father, we lift our eyes to the world. We pray urgently — and we mean urgently — for peace.
We pray for the Middle East, Lord, where war has come to too many places at once. We pray for Israel and Palestine, where bloodshed has not stopped and grief has not been allowed to settle. We pray for the United States and Iran, for an end to the violence between them, and that it would not widen further than it already has. We pray on every side of every line — for the protection of the vulnerable, for the sparing of children, for the displaced and the frightened, for comfort to those who have already lost more than we can imagine. And Father, we pray for those among us this morning who carry these places personally — who have family caught in conflicts they cannot reach across, who watch the news with a weight the rest of us cannot fully share. Be near to them, Lord. Hold their loved ones in your hands. And bring peace — real peace, your peace — to a region that has known far too little of it for far too long.
We pray for Russia and Ukraine, for an end to a war that has gone on too long and cost too much, for justice that does not abandon mercy, and for mercy that does not abandon justice. Lord, have mercy on this world. Lord, have mercy.
We pray for the persecuted church — for our brothers and sisters who bear the name of Jesus at a cost we have never had to pay. Strengthen them, sustain them, and let them know that across the world they are remembered, and they are loved, and they are not alone.
And we pray, Father, for the going out of the gospel — to the ends of our street, and to the ends of the earth, and to every place between. From our kids ministry to our ESL class, from Christianity Explained to the nations, from this church on this morning to wherever your Spirit will send us next. Let the thread of your good news run through everything we are and everything we do. We have nothing better to offer this world than Jesus, and we have nothing less than Jesus to offer.
All of this we bring to you in the name of your Son — in whom all things, our joy and our grief, our church and our world, our beginnings and our endings, hold together.
Amen.