Father of Tender Mercies, we come as your people today expecting to meet you in this place and at this time. As you greet us, our lives will reflect back from your countenance the depth or shallowness of our lives grounded in you. Dear God, use this time to deepen us, strengthen us, and illumine us in the shadowy dark places of our soul and restore us to your precious side.

Jesus, we come to this Transfiguration Sunday and pray you will reveal your true and full glory to us. Help us to see nuances of you and the Gospel we’ve never experienced or understood; in doing so, enlarge our hearts towards our neighbor and their plight and to the injustices in our world we willingly or unwillingly perpetuate. Please reveal to us our own complicity in the evils of bigotry, consumerism, environmental exploitation, or political rancorousness. Let us see the faces of sisters and brothers in the world versus opponents, competitors or enemies.

Spirit of Life and Love, fill and transform us from the inside out this day. Enable each of us and this church as a whole to be Light in a world of shadows and ambiguity. May we truly live so that people will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Breathe into us your illumined understanding to life’s vexing problems and concerns; fill us with your Presence that we may faithfully love the unlovely, that we may be attentive at the bedside of those who are ill, that we will have the right touch and the right word to those who are facing fear from medical conditions or who are suffering the loss of a loved one. Help us, Spirit to see beyond ourselves and to see your working in the lives of those around each of us. Grant us awareness as individuals, as a Church, as neighbors and fellow citizens to the power of our words and how they can bring life or cause death in another’s soul.

We come, Triune God, this day and place our lives, our needs, our hopes, and dreams before you.  Hear us as we silently pray.