Rainbow – katyandtheword

Potent Promises: Flood and Promise

God’s Potent Promises for Peace

Flood and Promise
Genesis 6:5-22, 8:6-12, 9:8-17 Flood, Promise Rainbow
Matt 8:24-27 Jesus Calms Storm
Psalm 23 Lord is My Shepherd

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Call to worship:
Our God is the God of storms and rainbows.

The God of doves and the God of promises

Our God is the God of mighty waves, and calm peaceful seas.

How mighty is our God

How trustworthy is our God

Come let us worship God.

Call to Worship

God we long for your care

Help us when we need your care

Lead us to the still waters

God renew your covenant with us

God we give thanks to the God of peace

Come let us praise God’s Holy Name

Invitation to Confession: God’s compassion is wider than the sea. Come Let us confess ourselves to God.

Confession: God, I confess that I do not understand that potency of your promise. What does it mean that you made a covenant with Noah and all future generations? What does it mean that you permanently hung your bow, your weapon, in the sky? I confess that my wonder at the rainbow is still just a beginning of the understanding of your promises and covenants. Help me to dig deep into your promises I pray. (Silent Confession) Amen.

Just as the storm will be calmed, as certain as God hangs God’s rainbow in the sky, we can be certain God loves us, God knows us and God forgives us, Let us proclaim the good news to one another In Jesus Christ we are forgiven. Amen

Call of the Day/Dedication: God may we continue to seek your promises, and to know that your joy is in creation and love, and you are with us. Remind us to be a people of your promise as we go, we pray in your most Holy name. Amen.

Children: Talk about the rainbow as God Disarming Godself. God promises never to weaponize anger against us. Book Suggestion “Where the Wild Things Are” “The Napping House” “The Napping House”

Hymns: God of the Sparrow, My Shepherd Will Supply My Need, Wherever I May Wander, I’ve God Peace Like River,

If you want a document version of this entire series for easy viewing and formatting just email me at Katyandtheword at gmail and title it Narrative Lectionary and I will be happy to send it to you.

If you would like to support my work, please give to my gofundme for my D. Min in Creative Writing or in an exciting new prospect become a Patron for only $3 a month!

Full Resource

Prescient God: Rainbows & Trinities

Today I think that the most prescient thing God ever did was to hang their rainbow in the sky.

God knew what God was doing when they hung up the bow after the storms

Knowing that we needed the reminder that every storm runs out of rain–as Maya Angelou put it.

Knowing that it would be claimed and expanded by all of God’s queer children, proclaiming that love is love is love is love and that God created a multiplicities of genders and sexualities–just like God created a rainbow with thousands upon thousands of hues and in-betweens.

We need rainbows, because God knew

Before sociological studies and microscopic and macroscopic science; before we did our Genesis job of naming all of the people, places and things of the world, you knew that very naming would make us create divisions.

Before we made elaborate charts to discover and explicate the mystery of the Trinity, God, you knew

You knew how much we need rainbows

You knew racism would be a stumbling block of sin,

that normalcy is a illusion of bigotry

that being neurotypical or not is a spectrum….which is another word for rainbow

and that gray can beautiful color, and sometimes we sit in the gray–

God I always imagine that the Trinity is gray, in between and a part of the rainbow world you created.

And God, you knew that you, the Almighty and Many Breasted God needed to symbolically and in all practicalities disarm Godself.

Promising never to send natural disasters as punishment.

Never.

And putting the most powerful weapon of the time, the equivalent of a gun, up. Forever.

Because if God can disarm Godself, then it is clear what we should do.

In the midst of horrific gun violence in the US, the state imbued violence in the United States and Colombia, and in the midst of border wars in Armenia-Azerbaijan, climate asylum and violence in Syria, and the oppression and apartheid conditions in Gaza.

God you know we need to figure out how to live in concert and beauty in rainbows–and how to first and foremost disarm ourselves as you did thousands of years ago.

Thousands of years ago.

God, thank you for your prescience.

And for all the rainbows

And for giving us the time.

And the promises within the rainbow, that it won’t always be like this.

Help us embody your rainbow.

Help us to honor your rainbow.

Fill us with rainbows I pray.

Amen.

rainbow | National Geographic Society — Image

Feel free to Share/Adapt/Use this prayer with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

God of the Rainbow Coat

God,

when you looked into Joseph’s face, laced with drama;

when you saw their heart–full of queer notions…

And their coat/cloak/princess dress that was rainbow to its core.

When you truly got to know who Joseph was.

Then, and only then did you call them by name.

I know this, because you are God, and you are with us.

You don’t call us as strangers who might be able to help.

You call us as beloved children who you know can be more fulfilled serving others.

You didn’t ask Joseph to take off their rainbow dress, or to change, or to be better–you just asked them to come.

And it is beautiful that you can take a dreaming child, who was too flamboyant, and dramatic, and talked to much, and turned their dreams into hope.

First for all of Egypt, and then for the very siblings that betrayed them.

May we all have the grace to remember that God calls us exactly as we are. Remind us, that just as God knows each and every star, God knows and calls us all by name.

We pray in the Holy Names of Christ

Amen.

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

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