Father in Your wisdom and knowledge You formed us and shaped us into Your image and likeness, to reflect Your glory within the world. You knit us together in our mother’s wombs and we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Yet Lord, we consider this Sunday the plight of so many unborn, made in Your image, whose lives have been brought to end. Would you reverse this in our society, starting within our hearts Lord, to bring about compassion and life for the most helpless among us. And as a part this same compassion Lord would You also work in and through Your church to come alongside mothers in desperate situations, to provide care for them in such a way that they don’t even see this as an option.

On top of this Lord would You make us a people that are holistically for life, seeking the care of orphans, the fatherless, children given up for adoption, special needs children, those marginalized because of their race, immigrants, those caught up within human trafficking, abused women in all kinds of situations, widows, the oppressed here and around the world, the poor and struggling among us in the city, and the dying. In all of this would You work in us such that we would carry out the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to seek the upholding of righteousness even to our own inconvenience, precisely because You first sought us and brought us to life through the finished work of Christ, and because You are the Lord of the resurrection both now and forever.

(BCP) Almighty God, whose Son revealed in signs and miracles the wonder of your saving presence: renew your people with your heavenly grace, and in all our weakness sustain us by your mighty power; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.