<p>Let us open our hearts to the One who loves us,</p><p>Oh Lord, our hearts are full with wants and needs, fears and wishes, worries and uncertainties, schemes and plans. Help us to empty ourselves before you. Guide us as we examine the contents stored in this most intimate place. Help us rid ourselves of that which only burdens and choose to carry than which serves you and this body to which we belong.</p><p>Let us throw worry away. Help us to unclasp its insidious fingers from the hold on our hearts.</p><p>Let us sweep up the numerous, small desires for self-serving pleasures from inside the chambers of our being.</p><p>Thaw the cold our fears bring.</p><p>Destroy the walls of isolation we have erected.</p><p>Help us rid ourselves of the baggage of victimhood – harbored resentments, bitter memories, and wounded egos.</p><p>Let us clear a space for love. And let us give thanks. We are grateful for your gifts- for freedom and family, for safety and abundance, for good health and good care, for volunteer firefighters, and committed teachers, and dedicated friends.</p><p>We have delighted this week in the many ways you have touched our lives, with gentle breezes, morning birdsong, the embrace of friends, children’s laughter, sunlight, moonlight, and starlight, and the warmth of your presence at prayer.</p><p>But most of all we thank you for your gracious love, for its calm in times of trouble, for its healing in the midst of pain, for its unending availability.</p><p>Help us accept it, for it changes everything, especially us. Let us be transformed, that we may by prayer and deed, tend the ill, mourn loss, feed the hungry, sit with the disspirited, bless those who wish us evil, stand against injustice, celebrate the achievements of others, and sing joyously at the dawn of each new day.</p><p>Let us learn to love as we pray the prayer of the one who came in love, Our father who art in heaven,…</p><p>Amen.</p>