Prayers of Thanksgiving, Intercession, and Petition

Shared during Sunday Worship on December 21, 2025.

Lord, Your joyful radiance shall be born into our world sooner than we can imagine. It is good news of a great joy for all people.  Good news that came first to a young girl named Mary, who shouted with joy at Your love and justice for all people.  It came to Peter and Paul when You called them by name and forgave them for their weakness and sin. This joy could not be contained into one time and place and so it spilled over the world and down through history, though there have been many dark times which threatened to dispel it.  

The depth of human sin has sought to quiet it, greed, lust and war have tried to pervert it.  Others try and hold onto it so that it is all their own and no one else’s.  But thanks be to You O God that it cannot be quenched because the songs of angels reach through the clouds into many surprising places. When we see this joy on the faces who have so little; we realize that our own joy, peace, and love could be so much more. It will come not through more things but through greater justice, and deeper sharing— sharing not just what we have but who we are. We pray that this good news of great joy might work to heal the wounds which so trouble our lives and our world.

We pray that reconciliation might come to our world. We pray that Your forgiveness and the gift of the Christ child might serve to heal the breach of politics in our land.  Make us one people again and help us to work as one for the betterment of the whole planet. Be with those who dive into places that are most bereft of this joy. Our military, keep them safe. Give those serving overseas and away from family a special measure of your Spirit’s presence that they may not feel alone though they are an ocean away.  We pray for all of those who work deep into the night when others are at home, warm in their beds: utility workers, emergency room nurses, doctors and technicians; janitors who clean our building buildings until late at night, and truck drivers who travel on dangerous roads to bring our goods. Keep all of them safe and help them feel a measure of our thankfulness.

We pray that each one of us might know the fullness of the good news in the depths of our hearts that our own joy might infect all with Your grace and love, the name of the one whose life gives us life. Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Christ, the one who was, who is, and who is to come, world without end, amen.