Blessing for Finals Week and Advent (Lynne)

Great and Compassionate God, we beseech your blessings on us this week as we finish the semester and begin the wondrous season of Advent. Fill us with patience, persistence and sleep that we might stay focused on the true reason for which we are at LSTC. Keep us mindful of caring for ourselves while we imbue these bodies that you have blessed with excess stress, minimal exercise and questionable nutrition. We ask your blessings on those who will graduate and go out into the world of ministry. Guide them, fill them with your grace and keep them in your loving arms. For although we are now a community united through your son, Jesus Christ, soon we will scatter to the four corners of the world. And we thank you for bringing us all together during these years of formation and learning so that we might know our sisters and brothers through that baby due to be born, Jesus.

Amen.

eating disorder grace

God of all, we thank you for the works you are doing today. we thank you for the food on our table and the friends and family around our table. we thank you that we are able to eat today and ask that you send your Spirit to comfort those who cannot eat today. oh God of compassion, show your love to our sisters and brothers struggling with food issues and eating disorders. may we be agents of your work among them and all people. help us to recognize our own eating problems and show us ways to take better care of our bodies. and bless this food we are about to eat to the health of our bodies, and bless our bodies to work in your service. amen.

In this grace, I wanted to think about praying for those with an eating disorder. It recently occured to me that thanking God for providing food to eat would hard and awkward for someone who did not want to eat that food. I also wanted to touch on all of the ways we eat 'incorrectly' and ask God to help us fix that. I hope it could be a grace that people on all sides of the issue could pray.

winter grace

God of growth and death, we humbly thank you for this food you have provided. In this season where so much appears dead and dying, we thank you that you are the living God who always looks after your children. Teach us not to look for you only in the green leaves, but also in the bare branches. Bless this food to our bodies and our bodies to your service. Amen.


For me, this grace reflects the season of winter. It is easy to lose sight of what God is doing in winter when everything is dark and grey and stark. But we must remember that God has always provided through lean times, and is even now providing food to eat when the ground outside is frozen solid. Our God never forgets her children.

A Table Grace for Advent: David's Grace #3

Christ our Light and our Life,

We remember that you once came to us -- enfleshed and in our likeness.

We remember your promise to come again and bring in the fullness of the kingdom.

Help us to remember, as we partake of this meal, that you are continually coming.

That you are still enfleshed and in our likeness.

That you are among us now at this table.

And that you are among those who are not at any table this day.

Help us to remember during this season:
The poor.
The hungry.
The unemployed.
The homeless.
And all in need.

And may this food you have provided strengthen us:
To be your hands.
To be your eyes.
To be your ears.
To be your heart.
And to show your love to all.

We pray this in your holy, life-giving name.

Amen.

Advent is a time of expectation, but it is also a time to remember. Take the word apart. Re-member. Member back together. In this grace, we re-member ourselves in Christ to those at the table and those who are not. We re-member ourselves to those who can eat their fill, and those who do not know where their next meal will come from. We re-member ourselves to our faith -- that Christ not only has come, and will come, but is coming. Christ is always among us, if we just open ourselves to his presence.

It's a rough time for a lot of folks. This holiday won't be a very happy one for many. While we give thanks for what we have, we need to wake ourselves up to what others are going through. In Mark's Gospel for the 1st Sunday of Advent, Jesus reminds us to keep awake. Let's not only keep awake for Christ's eventual coming, but for his continual coming among us and the whole human family.