Waiting for the Wind and Satisfy Your Longings: for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Waiting for the Wind -- A Gathering Meditation
(May also be used as a prayer)
(Acts 1:6-14)

On difficult days,
When nothing goes well
And life crushes and squeezes and hurts

On difficult days,
When you can't find your voice
And it feels like the right to choose is taken away

On difficult days,
When courage fails
And the creature in all of us clamors to take the front seat

Remind yourself
That we are all waiting for the Wind.

Satisfy Your Longings -- A Pastoral Prayer

Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one, as we are one. (John 17:11b, NRSV)

O God, how we long to be people worthy of your name.
To embrace the stranger,
to love lepers into wholeness,
to comfort the motherless and the fatherless.

O God, how we long to shed our shame
Over those we ignore
Over those we silence
Over those we slandered and those we slaughtered.

O God, how we long to be one
One with you in love for all peoples
One with each other in fellowship and witness
One with creation in praising your name.

Loving God, satisfy our longings to fulfill your longings in Jesus' prayer.
Amen.