STARTING AUGUST 7
The purpose of our prayer list as a church is not only so we can read off a list of names during the Prayers of the People each week, but also so the whole community of God that worships at St. James can know who is on the hearts and minds of our brothers and sisters. Printing a list makes it possible for each of us to take those names with us from the Sunday service and pray for them throughout the week. Adding someone’s name to the prayer list is a way of getting the whole body of the church to lift them up in prayer during the week.
To encourage us in praying for one another and those on our prayer list, we will be giving out a slip of paper with a name on it to each person as they leave church starting on August 7. You may not know the person you’ve been given; you may not know why they are on the prayer list; you may not even know how to pronounce their name. But this does not stop you from pausing during the week to lift up that name, to imagine them healthy and whole and without pain, to ask that God’s mercy and love should fall upon them. While praying for them, you may think of others in or out of the church whom you also wish to lift up.
So we encourage you to take a slip of paper on Sunday, just one name. Take that person with you during the week and hold them in your prayers. This is one of the many ways we remind ourselves that we are part of a community, by showing we care about others and their loved ones. May we be shaped by our prayers into a more deeply loving community that we might fulfill Jesus’ prayer for us, that we might be one.