= OPENING PRAYER 1

God of Life, we acknowledge and welcome your presence with us today.  During this season of waiting, you have called us to be witnesses to a new vision, to a new way of living and working with each other.  Today you set before us the examples of Mary and Joseph as witnesses willing to ask questions and to make changes in the “Way things have always been”.  

We gather now in prayer and thanksgiving to ask your aid as we individually and collectively struggle with being members of this new vision.

= OPENING PRAYER 2

We begin
this gathering with the Holy One who gives us life,
with the Human One who redeems our life,
with the Spirit who enriches our life.  Amen.

= OPENING PRAYER 3

Rejoice people of God.
Celebrate the life within you
and Christ’s presence in your midst.

Once we were no people, but now we are God’s people, called out of the darkness into God’s marvellous light.

= OPENING PRAYER 4

Visit, O Holy Spirit,
this company assembled for prayer and praise.  Through you, may we experience the power and wisdom of God’s word.  Amen.

= OPENING PRAYER 5

Inhabit our hearts, God of history,
as you once inhabited human flesh.  

Be here among us with all of Your wisdom, all of Your power, all of Your mercy, all of Your love, that we might learn to be like God from our God who came to be like us.  

Holy are You. Holy are we who are one with You forever.  Amen.

= OPENING PRAYER 6

Loving God,
You who know and love us, and who guide all of your wondrous creation, we thank you for being our God.  We thank you for this community, and for the opportunity to live and grow in freedom, justice and love.
We ask for your living presence in our midst.  Give us wisdom, courage, energy and teach us to live co-operatively.  In the name of Jesus, our redeemer.  Amen.

= OPENING PRAYER 7

Eternal God,
lead us now
out of the familiar setting of our doubts and fears,
beyond our pride and our need to be secure
into a strange and graceful ease
with our true proportions and with yours;
that in boundless silence we may grow strong enough to endure
and flexible enough to share your grace.    Amen.

= OPENING PRAYER 8

Receive our prayer today, Guiding God, as a harmony of hearts.  Together we are before you, each of us with a unique voice, a unique story, a distinctive background, a distinctive future--but at this moment, behold us as a single circle, turned toward you.  Teach us, together, to pray.

ALL:  Blessed be God forever.