Many here have labored long and hard to help bring us together, made one by the Holy Spirit,
into communal space through PCUSA’s General Assembly. Thanks to all for their efforts.
Thanks be to God for our connections and connectedness as congregation and PCUSA.
Called to share our gifts, we bring different gifts together to share for the good of all.
Walter Brueggemann says it well in his poem below, called “We are different”:
“We are counted your people,
We are grateful to be called by you, and
glad for our specific way of faith in the world.
You have marked us and named us and signed us,
and we are different,
different memories,
different hopes,
different fears,
different commands,
different ways of being.
That difference we find glorious, but at times a burden too severe.
We yearn to be like others,
like others in power,
in money,
in freedom,
in certitude,
in security,
like the others
uncalled, unburdened, unembarrassed.
We come to you in that deep trial of difference and likeness.
Engage us in our difference,
Give courage for our different vocations,
and energy for our different hope.
In the name of your crucified, Easter One, so unlike the others.
Amen.” From “Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann (p. 89)”