28C*
A Call to Worship
Maundy Thursday Year C 2013
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19

Listening God, we come to worship you, offering to you our God-given gifts.
United in our desire to praise our God, we come to our shared sacred space.

Faithful God, just as you are faithful to us, may we always be faithful to you!
United in our deep commitment to God, we come to our shared sacred space.

Pilgrim’s God, we come to dedicate our offerings of thankfulness and commitment.
United in our purpose to offer our praises to God, we joyfully come to our shared
sacred space, to lift up all that symbolises our shared faith within our “cup of blessing”. Amen

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Prayers of Trust and Thankfulness
Maundy Thursday Year C 2013
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19

Generous God, every part and characteristic of our lives has been enriched
by God’s goodness to us as individuals, and also to us as a community of
faith that meet together to thank and praise our God. We come, to commit
ourselves to God and to each other, offering to God our experiences, our
service and our skills to the world where God has placed us; we also commit
to serve each other in this our own community; but also, to make these acts
of service an offering and a sacrifice of praise and thanks to our Holy God.

Trustworthy God, you know who we are; what are our gifts and graces; who
were our forebears and the struggles they endured in their quest to be
faithful to their saving God. On this day we come together to God with all our
flaws, faults and failings; but also with God’s gifts, blessings and mercy to
empower and enable us to offer ourselves back to God, and also to offer
ourselves to each other. We come today to this our shared sacred space,
to make our vows to God, to ourselves, and to each other; aware that we
will need to encourage and support each other to meet these commitments.

Listening God, you are always ready and willing to hear our cries for help
and to answer our prayers! We gather to worship our God, who is present
now with us in the most intimate of ways. We have God’s promise that God’s
people are very precious to the God’s own Being; and that there is nothing in
life or death that can come between us and God’s love for us; and so we vow
to always trust in our God, and to always have faith and trust in the power of
our prayers to God. Praise be to the holy name of God, now and forever. Amen.

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A Personal Meditation
Maundy Thursday Year C 2013
Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-19

Isaac Watts used a variety of Psalms to express his faith in God, and
although the words of the hymn quoted below are supposedly based on
Psalm 146, they could just as easily have been based on Psalm 116!
“I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath,…my days of praise shall ne’er
be past, while life and thought and being last, or immortality endures…”¹
The Psalmist sang and encouraged others to sing: “I will pray as
long as I have breath..!” He also sang: “...I will praise the Lord’s name
for saving me... you have freed me from my bonds! And so I walk in
the Lord’s presence as I live here on earth! I believed in you, so I prayed..”
Whoever was the author of this Psalm, he knew all about the fragility of
life, and all that can entrap a person! He knew God had saved him, and
so he celebrated God’s generous goodness, and the true beauty of living!



“Breath” is always associated with life and being alive. However faint a
person’s breathing may be; and there are many old and new ways to
test the presence of breath and life; and, whilst there is still that faint
movement of the chest when inhaling or exhaling – there is still hope
for the continuing existence of life! As a former nurse, carefully noting
a patient’s observations was always important in the shared tasks of
caring for them, but I always found observing the respirations of very ill
patients extremely hard to judge over a specified length of time, as their
breathing was often so laboured and slow. The author is promising that
whilst there is even the slightest possibility of life, there are opportunities
to still come to God in prayer! While there is breath - anyone can still pray!



I have always loved the intimacy of the implied concept of God leaning
over the one who was praying, to make sure every word was heard!
I was nine years old when my grandfather died, and he had been both
blind and deaf for many years prior to that. I still have vivid memories of
my grandfather leaning close above me as we chatted, to make sure he
never missed even one of my words. It was his special attentiveness to
me that so endeared him to me; and the belief that this created within me
that what I had to ask or say, was always vitally important to him! That is
how I imagine God bending attentively to ensure no words or prayers of
mine are ever missed, that what I have to ask or tell God, is of absolute
and vital importance to God! How attentively great is our Ever-present God!

¹ Hymns words by Isaac Watts 1674-1748 (altered) Words are in the Public Domain.

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Acknowledgements:
Unless stated otherwise, all Bible readings and extracts used in these weekly Prayers and
Meditations are from the ‘New Living Translation’, © 1996. Copyright. All rights reserved.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189 USA.

*The additional weekly numbering is from the Revised COCU Indexing Scheme
COCU = ('Consultation on Church Union'); as it offers an easy sequential numbering for the Revised
Common Lectionary for the Church Calendar.

If any part of these Prayers and/or Meditations is used in shared worship, please provide
the following acknowledgement:
© 2013 Joan Stott – ‘The Timeless Psalms’ RCL Psalms Year C. Used with permission.

jstott@netspace.net.au

Download/view a pdf file of this document here: maundythursdayc_2013.pdf

© 2013 Joan Stott - " The Timeless Psalms" RCL Psalm Year C