Evening Prayer Thursday 2 July 2020
A reading from the Prophet Isaiah
25 ‘To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel,
‘My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God’?
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no-one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40: 25–31 NIV®
You, O Lord, are without equal, and we praise you for your greatness.
When we raise our eyes to the heavens, we marvel at the beauty of your creation.
On a warm summer’s evening we can sit out and watch as you bring out the stars one by one.
We rejoice in the universe that you have given us to be our home,
and we are humbled by the immense vastness
of all the worlds that we see as tiny points of light in the night sky.
Yet we know that you are with us, you know us and you care for every one of us.
Forgive us when we say, like Jacob and Israel, that you ignore our needs.
Grant that we may recognise that you are always with us, even in our darkest hour.
We ask that you will hear our prayers, and answer them as you know will be best for us.
We cannot know you as you know us, but we know that you are with us, to the ends of the earth.
We pray that you will give strength to all those who are weary of this pandemic,
that you will uphold all those who stumble and fall.
Tonight we thank you for all the blessings we have received from you today,
and we give thanks for all those people, whether friends or strangers,
through whom we have received these blessings.
We ask for your blessings on all of them, too.
Help us to be aware of all the people on whom we depend for our comforts and necessities.
Give us the grace to show them the gratitude they deserve.
As we prepare for our night’s rest, we bring to you all the unresolved difficulties of this day,
leaving them before you, knowing that you will resolve them according to your great plan.
And we ask that you will give us a sense of proportion, so that we can recognise what is important,
and what is not, if we are to fulfil our duty to love and serve you.
Bind us all together in your love.
We end our prayers this evening by saying the Grace together.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all, evermore.
Amen
