Merciful God, we turn away from the pains and cries of our world. Overwhelmed by its brokenness, we ignore the call to engage and love those who are hurting. Father, forgive us, strengthen us, and hel...
Almighty God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You tell us to pray with thanksgiving...and we do; giving thanks for Your daily provision and care, for the birth of a child, for new jobs and new friends, fo...
Ephesians 3:16-19, Matthew 3:16-17, Acts 4:32-35, Galatians 5:22-23, John 14:26-27, Romans 15:13, Acts 2:1-4
Triune and Loving God: on this Pentecost Sunday, we ask for the gift of Your Holy Spirit to help us pray as we ought today and always. Come, Holy Spirit: Help Us. We ask for Your Spirit’s energy an...
O Lord and Father of the household of faith, we thank you for the gift of faith worked within us by your Holy Spirit. We thank you for having called us to yourself, for consecrating us to your ser...
Modernized Version O merciful Father, who teaches us in your holy Word that you do not willingly afflict or grieve humanity: Look with pity upon the sorrows of your servant for whom our prayers are ...
Pastor: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised ...
We bring before you, O Lord, the troubles and perils of people and nations, the sighing of prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of strangers, the helplessness of the we...
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised...
…there is no more ridiculous custom than the one that makes you express sympathy once and for all on a given day to a person whose sorrow will endure as long as his life. Such grief, felt in such a wa...
Most who know anything at all about the Oxbridge professor C. S. Lewis know that he wrote two books on pain and sorrow. One is more an apologetic on the nature of suffering, The Problem of Pain, and a...
We are again in a moment of intense anger, fear, and sorrow. We've been here too often, lately. In September 2025, prominent activist Charlie Kirk was killed in front of a crowd in Utah. This ca...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Back to Bethany The trans-Jordan village of Bethany was the place in which Jesus’ ministry began. It is now the place in which our text...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Back to Bethany The trans-Jordan village of Bethany was the place in which Jesus’ ministry began. It is now the place in which our text...
Isaiah 53:10, John 1:29, Matthew 27:27-31, Psalm 22:, Isaiah 53:3-5
Pastor: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. People: He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; Pastor: and as one from w...
Matthew 5:4, Psalm 147:null, Psalm 34:18, Revelation 21:1-8, 2 Corinthians 1:3-12, Romans 8:18-28, John 11:null, 2 Thessalonians 3:16, John 14:27, 1 Peter 5:7, Daniel 6:, Psalm 46:, Psalm 23:, Job 1:, Job 2:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:
If you ever travel to Jerusalem and are looking for sites to see, beyond all the ‘must-see’ sites related to Ancient Israel, the Temple Mount, and the sites associated with Jesus, you might venture to...
As we feel the pain of our own losses, our grieving hearts open our inner eye to a world in which losses are suffered far beyond our own little world of family, friends, and colleagues. It is the worl...
Grief has no distance…Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.
Writer Harriet Sarnoff Schiff has distilled her pain and tragedy in a book called The Bereaved Parent. When her young son died during an operation to correct a congenital heart malfunction, her clergy...
In a time of acute crisis, when death sneaks into houses and shops, when you may feel healthy yourself but you may be carrying the virus without knowing it, when every stranger on the street is a thre...
People bring us well-meant but miserable consolations when they tell us what time will do to help our grief. We do not want to lose our grief, because our grief is bound up with our love and we could ...