Smoke from past lives hangs heavy about the city, Blown in from the West, ash covers up the sun. Where can we look to the future if we cannot see Heaven? How can we discern our next step when our past clouds the path before us? Pull us closer to our future, Oh Lord. Bring us home to your heavenly love. Beloved kin, scattered like seeds across the continents, We have forgotten our yoked destinies, Our faces are strangers, but our hearts pump the same blood, To forget each other is to deny ourselves. Teach us to love one another as you have, Jesus. Redeem us in your Holy forgiveness. Misplaced fears, anxious wanderings, How can we long for what we’ve never understood? The answers feel just out of reach, The story always cut short before the final page. Give us the patience to heed your calling, Help us sit in the mystery as we wait – In the name of God The Creator, Jesus our Savior, And the Holy Spirit, Our Most Loyal Companion. Amen. (Vox Prayer Team)
Scripture
We invite you to hear from the book of Philippians 3:7-14
7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God! The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. Amen.
Podcast: Don Koch, John Mark McMillan, Thomas Torrey, hosts, “Redefining Success” You Have Permission (podcast), March 24, 2025, accessed April 2, 2025.
Our hearts are not bound to the righteousness of men. Our souls will hold fast until the day our Savior comes. We will live in benevolent defiance amidst this toil of empire. We will find Joy in the Kin-dom that is to come. Our minds will not succumb to the barricades this world created for us, Our hands will not stay idle while others are in need. We will give and give and give like our Savior taught us. We will stand in the path of this human-made storm. Our bodies do not belong to the courts or their tyrant, Our feet will only seek the long road back to our heavenly home. We will leave here free from the ashes of our past, We will leave here in – The name of the Lord, Our Savior, And the Holy Spirit, Amen. (Vox Prayer Team)
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