150th Anniversary Prayer

Dear God, you hold all time in your hands. You hold the beginning and the end, and all that is in between. We thank you for our beginnings and trust you
with our endings. We thank you for your presence between the two.

What a joy this day gives us as a spiritual family called First Presbyterian.
This very morning by your providence we embark on a joyous year of remembering and recalling your graciousness to us across 150 years. Bless you for the persons unknown to us on whose shoulders we stand, and for the good news they are not unknown to you. Let us by your Spirit and grace be worthy children of our inheritance. Let us be the shoulders on which others will stand a century and more from now.

For all our wrinkled and bent, old ones, we give you thanks and by their long faithfulness to your call, we are blessed. For all our new babies and children and youth filled with promise, we give you thanks. For the common experience of finding faith and hope and love in this place called our spiritual home, we give you thanks.

We dedicate to your glory our lives together that we might seek a common way of love and faithfulness to one another, to our city and to our Presbyterian family, and to all who serve your name.

Glory be to you, O God, through Christ and Christ’s church, both this April and all Aprils to come until there is only the Springtime of Eternity.

We thank you for 150 years of joy and peace and hope rediscovered on the other side of the shadows and fears because in a house called First Presbyterian good news was shared, sacraments received,
a fellowship found and a cheerful service given.

O God, thank you for the future that is in our past.

Through Jesus Christ we pray and let God’s people say: “Amen.”