Category: prayer

During the Month of February, the Rooke Chapel Congregation is praying with great leaders, thinkers, activists, poets and scholars of the Black Church (writ large.)

This week, Sunday 2/24/19,  James Weldon Johnson –

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
thou who has by thy might,
led us into the light,
keep us forever in the path, we pray
lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met thee,
least our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee,
shadowed beneath the hand,
may we forever stand,
true to our God,
True to our native land.

During the Month of February, the Rooke Chapel Congregation is praying with great leaders, thinkers, activists, poets and scholars of the Black Church (writ large.)

This week, Sunday 2/17/19,  Howard Thurman –

Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.
Despite the dullness and barrenness of the days that pass, if I search with due diligence, I can always find a deposit left by some former radiance. But I had forgotten. At the time it was full-orbed, glorious, and resplendent. I was sure that I would never forget. In the moment of its fullness, I was sure that it would illumine my path for all the rest of my journey. I had forgotten how easy it is to forget.

There was no intent to betray what seemed so sure at the time. My response was whole, clean, authentic. But little by little, there crept into my life the dust and grit of the journey. Details, lower-level demands, all kinds of cross currents — nothing momentous, nothing overwhelming, nothing flagrant — just wear and tear. If there had been some direct challenge –a clear-cut issue —
I would have fought it to the end, and beyond.

In the quietness of this place, surrounded by the all-pervading Presence of God, my heart whispers: Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.
Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.

from For The Inward Journey
by Howard Thurman

During the Month of February, the Rooke Chapel Congregation is praying with great leaders, thinkers, activists, poets and scholars of the Black Church (writ large.)

This week, Sunday 2/10/19,  Coretta Scott King –

Eternal and everlasting God, who art the Father of all mankind,
as we turn aside from the hurly-burly of everyday living, may
our hearts and souls, yea our very spirits, be lifted upward to
Thee, for it is from Thee that all blessing cometh. Keep us ever
mindful of our dependence upon Thee, for without Thee our
efforts are but naught. We pray for Thy divine guidance as we
travel the highways of life. We pray for more courage. We pray
for more faith and above all we pray for more love.
May we somehow come to understand the true meaning of Thy
love as revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Thy
son and our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. May the Cross ever
remind us of Thy great love, for greater love no man hath given.
This is our supreme example, O God. May we be constrained to
follow in the name and spirit of Jesus, we pray.

via beliefnet.com