Topical Prayer: Holy God, we confess that it is much easier to see your holiness in other places—beautiful countrysides, exciting trips to lands that we deem exotic, pristine and well kept buildings. It is harder to see God in the neighborhood. We know it’s flaws too well—we are too familiar with it. Who is my neighbor God? Anyone who is close enough to annoy us. Because if they are close enough to annoy us, then we are are close enough to love and help them. You are the God who is in the details, in the dusty and complicated relationships of those closest to us. In the vast outreaching arm for those far away that we feel compassion for. Truly, you are the God that creates neighbors, even between the competing religions the Samaritans and the Hebrew Jews, the Muslims and the Christians, the black churches and the white churches. Help us to be in true conversation and relationships with one another. Because that is the only way we are getting through this. Teach us to be neighbors we pray. Amen.
For the Complete List of Narrative Lectionary Lent Resources can be found here including a way to receive a doc copy
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Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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