April 3, 2024

Welcome to Mulberry Meditations! I’m so glad you’ve decided to join today in prayer. When we pray, we connect our heart to God’s heart, giving of our needs and praises while also receiving the grace, love, and provision of our great God. My name is Ted Goshorn, senior pastor of Mulberry Street United Methodist Church, and I’ll be guiding us through this time of prayer. 

Our prayers follow a contemplative liturgy, or pattern, in the long tradition of Christians who have utilized scripture readings, repeated refrains, and silence to commune through prayer. Together, we will hear scriptures from the daily lectionary, familiar hymn lyrics and music, and engage gradually in a time of silence, always preceded by scripture, that we may hear from God through God’s word. 

Now, I invite you to get comfortable, praying in whatever position feels natural, as we go through this time of prayer.

On this Wednesday in the season of Easter, April 3, 2024, we bring ourselves expectantly before our Lord in prayer, with praise and thanksgiving, opening ourselves to give and receive, from our heart to God’s heart. 

And so we pray:

God, come to my assistance. 

O Lord, make haste to help me. (Ps. 70:1)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen. (Gloria Patri)

Come and fill our hearts with your peace. You alone, O Lord, are holy. (Taize Community)

1 The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble!

    He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!

2 The Lord is great in Zion;

    he is exalted over all the peoples.

3 Let them praise your great and awesome name.

    Holy is he!

4 Mighty King, lover of justice,

    you have established equity;

you have executed justice

    and righteousness in Jacob.

5 Extol the Lord our God;

    worship at his footstool.

    Holy is he! (99:1-5)

Come and fill our hearts with your peace. You alone, O Lord, are holy. (Taize Community)

Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise! Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above. Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it; mount of thy redeeming love. 

Here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come. And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God! He to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood.  [UMH 400]

Come and fill our hearts with your peace. You alone, O Lord, are holy. (Taize Community)

Hear us now, O God, as we offer our prayers for:

• Our families and all who call us friend
• Our church and all who claim your name 
• Our community, be it neighborhood, town, or city 
• Our nation and world, especially remembering those caught up in conflicts
• My needs and praises this day

O Lord, hear my prayer. 

A reading from the prophet Micah, as we prepare ourselves to hear from God through keeping silence:

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

    and passing over the transgression

    of the remnant of his possession?

He does not retain his anger forever

    because he delights in showing steadfast love.

19 He will again have compassion upon us;

    he will tread our iniquities under foot.

You will cast all our sins

    into the depths of the sea.

20 You will show faithfulness to Jacob

    and steadfast love to Abraham,

as you have sworn to our ancestors

    from the days of old. (Micah 7:18-20)

Silence 

And now we pray as Jesus taught us to pray by saying: 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. 

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever; Amen.

Come and fill our hearts with your peace. You alone, O Lord, are holy. (Taize Community)

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

And now, may the Lord bless you and keep you: may the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: may the LORD turn his face toward you, and give you peace. 

Amen.

Subscribe by signing up for daily emails to pray each day. To learn more about Mulberry Street UMC and to give to support our work, visit mulberrymethodist.org. New prayers post daily, both as audio podcasts and blog posts, so I hope you will return often. Visit tedgoshorn.org to see written prayers and to learn more. Prayer transforms our hearts, as we seek to be evermore like Jesus.