Newsletter August 2023 | End of Summer Prayer
While living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, each year, we waited in anticipation for the end of the summer festival Kipona. The annual event marked the long dog days of summer would be replaced with the cool days of fall and the ensuing winter snow. Like clockwork, the air felt as if someone had turned a dowel. The word Kipona comes from the Pennsylvania Susquehannock and Shawanese tribes, meaning “sparkling water.” Many residents enjoyed the festival, arts, music, food, and fireworks. Our souls were refreshed. We did not grieve summer’s passing. The new season was filled with its own level of excitement. Ahead was the beginning of the Christian Education Year. The Church would hold its annual Blessing of the Children Service. Educators and church school teachers would be commissioned. Congregations would plan special services. The smell of burning wood was just weeks away. The holidays were coming, and although I did not look forward to the pressure. I looked forward with joy to planning the ways in which the Church would spread the Gospel message.
As you plan for the new Christian Education Year I offer this prayer:
God of eternal hope, into what shall be, come. Come to the place where hopes reside, where dreams are waiting to take flight, and the places deep within us that long for inspiration. You are called Dayspring and a living well, refresh us like sparkling water.
Through the Holy Spirit, make us one in spirit and purpose. Give us a posture of hopefulness. Though things have changed, and the future is unknown, nothing escapes your knowing. You have promised that each of our lives will be filled with your grace. So, we claim your promises of care, provision, and intervention.
Future God, although the seasons change your love for us abides forever. Let this knowledge shape what we do next and how we live in the world. With new hearing, attune our ears to your voice heard from the margins of society. Let not our place of comfort blind us from the need to keep working for justice. Give strength to our voices as we proclaim the power of the Gospel to transform life and the conditions in which evil, exploitation, domination, scarcity, and fear for too long have diminished the humanity of so many.
God, who gifts your servants as earthen vessels, live within us, making us bold in our love for the Gospel and that which is eternal. For the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and in his name we pray. Amen
Written By,
Rev. Dr. SanDawna Gaulman Ashley
Transitional Synod Leader