Prayer: Fathers & Fathering
Below is a pastoral prayer written for Sunday morning worship on Father’s Day 2017. It seeks to acknowledge the richness and complexities of this day while inviting God into it all. Use or adapt away!
Female and male, feminine and masculine, mothering and fathering, God, Scripture bears witness to this richness in your being, and in the world through you.
One month ago we spoke and prayed of you in the language of female, and feminine and mothering. And today, on this day in our culture that we call Father’s Day, we use the language of male and masculine and fathering.
God, abba, patér, padre, pita, baba, father, we pray to you today with thanks for the gifts of male and masculine and fathering, and thanks for the ways these gifts help and heal and care for your creation and your people.
It’s true no father is perfect. It’s true that fathering sometimes wounds and hinders and fails. It’s true there is need today, not only for thanksgiving, but also for an acknowledgement of failing and sin and the need for forgiveness.
And so today we pray with thanksgiving, we pray with acknowledgement, we pray seeking forgiveness, and we pray for guidance:
God, guide our fathers;
guide them more fully into your ways;
guide them with grace, and love, and Spirit;
guide them with life, into life, and for the life of all who they father.
We pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, the one who called You abba, and who taught us to pray, as we say together: Our Father…AMEN.
© Rev. Kevin Goldenbogen, 2017
