Here is another prayer from the dot matrix days, the first of two with this theme.
For those with whom we are bound in prayer (1)Gracious God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of Christ our Savior: Accept our thanks for all who remember us before you in prayer and grant that with your saints in every place and time we may praise your Name, uphold one another in love, intercede for the world, and faithfully await your renewal of all creation, though Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
It would be difficult to overstate the comfort I take and strength I gain from an awareness that other people think of me (kindly) and hold me before God in prayer, whatever form that prayer may take. In times of great physical or emotional distress I have, nonetheless, sometimes felt myself lifted on a buoyant golden cloud of prayer. That awareness shaped this prayer written during our earlier years in the Bay Area.
This is the prayer as originally composed. I do not believe in passively expecting God to fix everything when we are the agents God appoints to work the divine will, which is why the adverb "faithfully" modifies our method of waiting. It is not only having faith in a vision of the reign of God but being faithful in our role, doing our part.
It should also be understood that when I use the traditional phrase "our only Mediator and Advocate," I view Christ as the universal and eternal Word by whom all things are made and held in being. I am not asserting a "Jesus or fry" theology. In my theological vision nothing and no one exists outside the speaking of the Word, so all are included, none are excluded, and I believe there are many paths up one mountain.
--the BB
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