Experiencing The Lovers Dialog Between Church, World and God: in the pastoral prayer
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
IT'S THURSDAY AND THE NIGHT IS DARK (A Maundy Thursday Prayer)
We bring so much emptiness, O God, into this very special place. Among us we have so many differing reasons for being here, and we are so different from one another. How have you managed to reach inside each of us, as different as we are, and to draw us all together, here in this place, in the quiet of this evening? Though we are trying to trust that in Jesus Christ you have come to us and entered into our lives, the trust is probably more a response of the heart than of the head ... "something" in our hearts seems to be calling us to really, seriously, walk this road to the cross with our Lord, but our heads, the body-part of us, which can be so tired at the end of the day ... keep us from, fully, walking the walk. We find ourselves being drawn into the body's ever-ready escape into sleep, in spite of our Lord's plea not to be left alone, and we find ourselves drifting away...or are we bailing out...far short of the cross waiting there for him.. Yet here we are with this hushed sense that it is really Your Presence, O God; charging the atmosphere...apparently accepting the shortcomings of our humanness and using these moments to draw us into Your Body here, the Body of those who will trustingly participate in the giving and receiving of the bread and the wine...receiving and taking into ourselves his gift...a gift of body and blood...the gift of that part of him which is exactly the same as that part of ourselves. How is it that though we continually fall away, you continue to enter into our spirits and our bodies, making them one and drawing them into yours? In the light, we had decided to accept that you were there...and then we discover you were there in the dark as well. And how is it that we begin praying to you, God, and, somehow, slip into referring to him (Jesus) and you interchangeably? How come? So much mystery in it all. . . . . . . . . We have come here to wonder: When we think and speak of the "we" experience all the way from the upper room to the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross and then that empty tomb in a hillside... is it your love, God?...or the Love of Christ? The best we can do is to wonder. And to wonder how much you are with us in the wondering. Oh...oh...Yes!,,,Oh, Thank You!...Yes!...Amen, Amen and Amen.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
“This is a most helpful book about the challenge and opportunity of leading others in public prayer. Kent Borgaard invites the reader into an open and honest critique of prayers he has offered in a lifetime of ministry, with the hope that all such prayers include all hearers and quicken our intimacy with God. It is a valuable workbook for all who seek to effectively lead the church in worship. It is a creative work.”
Richard L. Spleth
Regional Minister
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in
About the Author
The early “nudgings” began to take form during summer youth conferences at Sylvandale at the foot of the
The navy experience was followed by a brief time in the business world, before that old hankering began to return, and he and Mary, and their two young daughters packed all their worldly goods in a U-Haul trailer and headed from
After 24 years as a pastoral minister in the midwest, with brief collateral duties as Chaplain in the Navy Reserve, and Intermittent Chaplain at the Veterans Hospital in Des Moines, IA, Kent became Director of Pastoral Care at a 340 bed General Hospital in Elkhart, IN, and the evolution continued, leading him into another role as Pastoral Services Coordinator at Oaklawn, a major Psychiatric and Community Mental Health Complex in north central Indiana. He feels peculiarly blessed to have been able to experience such a variety of Pastoral Care roles during a most satisfying career.