Prayer:Compassionate God, You were delighted for the one wish Solomon asked for: an understanding heart. Teach us the wisdom to discern our selfish needs and unjust expectations from what will most serve your reign and give depth and richness to the human experience. Teach us to be like Jesus. People kept coming after him, but he took your friends and messengers to an out-of-the-way place to rest, reflect and be refreshed. We need to listen in order to be for others. Teach us to take the time and find place to rest, reflect and be refreshed. Our lives are so busy. Expectations from within and without scream at us and drain our energy. InSpirit us with wisdom and balance that our hearts will always understand, and respond to you in the needs and expectations of your people!

Prayer:Jesus, spoken Word of God, John the Baptist lost his head because he spoke the truth. InSpirit us to speak the truth which you speak in our hearts. Teach us to trust the instincts you whisper within us. Free us to name injustice and evil which oppresses any of your sisters and brothers. Like Herod, we sometimes don't know what to think of you. Sometimes we are seduced to betray and behead the truth we know. Free us from cowardice and compromise. Teach us to be your prophets. Sensitize us to listen to your prophets. Help us to be like David, your anointed, in the wholehearted and multiple ways he was the instrument of your reign. Inspire us to be passionate prophets of your freeing presence in our world.

Prayer:Jealous God, You want everything. You especially want Your first born Son. You must have been moved as Mary and Joseph obediently offered their son to You at the Temple. What a price they would pay for handing him over! We rejoice that Jesus became one of us. All humanity and our human experience is made holy because You embraced us in the person of Jesus. We are offered as he was offered. We are holy by his presence among us. He brings and is light to the darkness of our lives. He is fire burning when our ashes are cold. It is interesting that only two old people even seem to notice. There is an old, cynical and jaded part of us that doesn't even expect you to be present and keeps you distant. Rekindle the fire within me that I might pray like Simeon and Anna, knowing that you are present in the temple of my life experience - that you are glory and light, even when I walk in darkness - when your presence and actions break my heart - and when you are a sign of contradiction for me. Be light and glory, Holy God. I am yours, because Jesus came into my world!

Prayer:Emmanuel, God with us, You are our strength. You were angry at David because he wanted to rely on the numeric strength of Your people, instead of depending on You. You gave him three choices of punishment. I would have chosen the shortest and least painful one, as he did. He really wanted You to punish him, and not the people. You really never want to be angry with us - at the slightest sign of repentance, You stay Your wrath - so powerful and defining is Your love for us. Sometimes we are like the people of Nazareth, who were not open to Jesus as Your instrument, because they wanted more. They were too familiar with him. Sometimes we expect You to be outside and beyond our experience. Help us to listen to Your voice in the people we live and work with. Inspire us to know that You are walking with us and we can find and see You in the ordinary people and circumstances of our lives.

Prayer:Mighty and Mysterious God, You have a wonderful and strange way of mixing defeat and victory, joys and sorrows. We celebrate David's triumph yet weep with him over the death of his beloved son Absalom. We have wept over relatives whose loss empties our heart. Sometimes we want and even demand miracles, like the healing of Jairus' daughter and the hemorrhaging woman. Touch our lingering pains and immediate hurts. Teach us to trust you, especially in times of painful darkness. You are the God of life and You make what seems like losses, death and disease into victories, life and wholeness

Prayer:Give us the courage and humility of David, O Faithful God, who could bear the truth of his murderous and deceitful heart, because he knew it was Your honest voice. Help us to face and accept the truth about ourselves and not live in delusion and denial, which becomes legion and multiplies. Your truth frees us, even though it is painful to hear, God of Wisdom! Sometimes we are chained and restrained by attitudes, hurts, judgments and actions which torture our spirit. The powerful demonic in us sometimes scream at you to remain distant. Speak your healing Word, Gentle Jesus, and cast out the evil that possesses our hearts and spirits. Our darkness is more legion than we imagine. Remove its self- destructive presence that we might know Your mercy and be embraced by Your saving love.

Prayer:God, You really do want our undivided attention! We are sorry for the people and circumstances that capture and need our attention and whom we worry about. But didn't You bring them into our lives? Keep us focused on You and the prophetic ways You speak and challenge us. Humble us not to speak our needs as if they were Your Word and divine commandment. Speak again to us that we might know Your Son Jesus and not be afraid. May he rebuke the demonic and demeaning spirits within us - those attitudes and judgments which shrink, diminish, cripple, divide, and destroy others. Give us the freeing spirit of Jesus. Allow Your reign to free everyone. Help us discern the prophets who speak of You today, and to disdain the voices of self-annointed righteousness. Be the God of our heart and attention, and help us to see and serve you in the people and commitments of our life.

Prayer:Jesus, sometimes when the seas of our life become turbulent, we feel ungrounded and are afraid. Sometimes, it does seem like you are asleep, so much do we depend on your protection and faithful friendship. Teach us to trust you, especially when storms of confusion, darkness, misunderstanding, fear and pain shake our deepest being. Calm us with trust. Let us know that you are in the boat with us and that your presence is everything and all-powerful. Give us wisdom to know that our violations of justice cause the storms on others' lives. Justice is the name of your reign. Teach us limits that we not take what is not ours. Be not violent with us, even when we are violent with others. Gift us with your mercy and justice. When we despoil others, inSpirit us with forgiveness and repentance. Teach us to be a just people, grounded in your law. Give us reverence and awareness that the sea we are sailing on and using is your sea. Its treasures belong to all your people, not just to a chosen few. As Thomas Aquinas faithfully translated Your message into the language and philosophy of his day, may Your Wisdom inspire us to translate faithfully your message into the language and philosophy of our day - in this temple of our human experience, where You speak to us today.

Prayer:Jealous God, You probably understand David, even as You disapproved of his liaison with Bathsheba and murdering her husband Uriah. You want to have us all for Yourself. InSpirit us to have the same passion for You. Free us and fire us, Jealous God of love. Teach us limits - that we cannot have things or people simply because we long or lust for them. Teach us respect for the rights of others. Humble us that we not murder other people, by action, word or silence. Continue to be that powerful mustard seed within us - small but creative. May the Spirit of Jesus quietly, constantly and invisibly work Your wonders within and among us. Thank You for being a God of Compassion Who understands and forgives us, even when You don't approve of what we do. Your mercy is stronger than Your jealousy. Continue to mysteriously grow in us.

Prayer:We are your chosen! Like Timothy and Titus and so many others, we are the messengers of Your Word, Holy God of Revelation. We are to proclaim Your promises and work for their fulfillment. Thank you for empowering trust. Make us people of light. Protect us from the distorted darkness of the scribes who saw evil in what they could not understand and embrace. Save us from unclean eyes and give us pure hearts so that we not demean, destroy or demonize those people and movements we don't understand. Instill us with Your compassion and wisdom to reverence the many mysterious ways You live and work in our world. Send us with apostolic fervor to the ends of the earth and the boundaries of Your Heart.