Belonging – katyandtheword

September 24th Jacob Wrestles God

Finding God: Blessings and Belonging
Jacob Wrestles God
Genesis 32:[9-13], 22-30
Mark 14:32-36

If you appreciate my work please consider giving to my FINAL year of Doctoral Work in Ministry in Creative Writing. I am writing a book of Poem Prayers and Essays to be Published for my dissertation.

Call to Worship
God you are with us
You give us the space to wrestle
God you find us when we are worried and alone
Bless us God today

Call to Worship
God of blessings
Bless us
Wrestling, Hoping, Lonesome or Hurting, You bless us
Let us walk away blessed today

Call to Confession: Whatever we are wrestling with, God can handle, Let us trust that God can wrestle with it too today.

Prayer of Confession: God, we feel like Jacob, needing to wrestle some more. The struggle, as they say, is real. We are weighed down with our past mistakes. We feel the pain of loneliness. We feel unworthy of the blessings you have awaiting us, and we have to wrestle first. Forgive us, teach us that we are beloved, and that you are ready to call us, by our chosen names, and bless us. In Jesus’s name we pray. (Silent Confession) Amen.

Assurance of Pardon: Hear the Good News, Blessings are not Pie, they flow from the cup overflowing grace of Jesus Christ, so we know the truth: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven, Amen.

Prayer of the Day/Dedication: God we know that the struggle is real. We are thankful that Jesus sees and understands when we limp along. Bolster us as we walk into the world today we pray. Amen.

If you appreciate my work please consider giving to my FINAL year of Doctoral Work in Ministry in Creative Writing. I am writing a book of Poem Prayers and Essays to be Published for my dissertation.

Belonging, A Prayer

God,

Sometimes, I confess,

I look at humans and say

REALLY?

Seriously.

And sometimes I keep my sense of humor

and say only humans…

Only humans can think up silly things like money and paperwork and Time and Countries,

(I mean how do those concepts even have meaning? They are very silly when you think about them too long)

And sometimes I think I don’t belong to humanity, or maybe humanity doesn’t belong to me.

And it makes me sad. And I don’t know where to turn.

And so here I am God, turning to you, because you promise I belong to you.

And maybe to the grass and the stars and the sea–even though I’m not really a nature child.

And secretly I think maybe I belong more to books and words and imaginary worlds that don’t even exist.

But either way, God. I guess we are figuring it out.

You, me, and this silly thing called humanity,

on this place called earth.

Good thing you made us with these things called jokes–

That I admit was a good idea on your part God.

My youngest made a good one yesterday.

Want to hear it? What do you call a bee that explodes in laughter?

Bee End.

Bee End, God,

Amen.

Please feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Full This Here Flesh Liturgy

Home

For those of you who don’t know me, I am very obsessed with Beauty and the Beast (Post about the Amazing Theology of Beauty and the Beast here)

Beauty and the Beast on Broadway (yes the Disney one) has a great song about home. Point and Case the title is Is this Home?

Synposis: Belle is weird, she reads books to get away, she is captured by a Beast, she still isn’t satisfied.

One of the major themes in Beauty and the Beast is the idea of Home/belonging. In the end, I think that is what everyone wants…to belong.

Belonging is home. What if instead of getting people to “join” churches, we made churches places where they feel like they belong.

How do we make church=home?