33C*
A Call to Worship
Easter 3C 2010
Psalm 30

We come to worship you, O Lord our God.
We want to praise your holy name,
We rejoice in your goodness to each one of us.

Within the community of faith I can share
that you O Lord, you have blessed and freed me,
and after this wonderful experience - I will not be silent!
I will forever praise your holy name.

Come and worship! Sing aloud, all God’s people!
Give praise to the One who saves us and blesses us,
and who turns our sorrow into the fullness of joy. Amen.

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Prayers of Confession
Easter 3C 2010
Psalm 30

Together, O Lord our God, in our prayers and in our living
we each continue to celebrate with joy, the release we feel
from the prison of our failings, and our physical and spiritual
pain, despair and anguish. You were so merciful, and O Lord
our God, and we all offer our thanks to you, our Caring God

O Lord, the God of all people who fail, we come together now
to confess to you the many times we have continued to fail,
and about which we are so ashamed! We are so regretful!
Our earlier failings continue to torment and bother us, and in
the dark hours of the night, many tears has been shed, as we
thought that all hope of recovery and forgiveness was gone.
Then there came the light of morning! New hope! New possibilities!
Praise be to your holy name! Let us celebrate the goodness of God!

Forgiving God, then to our continuing amazement, that deeply
personal flaw in our individual characters - arrogance – has
raised its ugly head again! That defect which we thought was well
hidden was back again, strutting around in proud defiance! Once
more we started to boast, to brag, to show off our supposedly
superior skills – when suddenly everything fell into a heap again.
We crashed back to earth! Our pride and arrogance became
like shrouds, weighing us down all over again. And we discovered
that wrinkled dreams and piles of ashes cannot sing praises to God!

Forgive us, O my God! We keep running to you whenever we realise
how stupid we have been! Hear us now, our loving and understanding
God. We have confessed all our sin to you, every last one that we
know of! We also confess to the sin that we know nothing about!
Once more, we come in humility to beg for your forgiveness.

Declaration of Forgiveness

God’s mercy is so generous.
God’s understanding is beyond measure.
You have turned our sorrow into joy,
our suffering into wholeness and health.
Our songs of joy ring out across the sky,
our spirits dance together in praise of God.
Thanks be to our merciful God. Amen.

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A Personal Meditation
Easter 3C 2010
Psalm 30

I come before you my God, in deepest gratitude, for you have
secured my release from the shadow of the prison of my sin,
suffering and death, and I praise your holy name for this blessing.



In my agony of mind and spirit, I cried out to you to save me
from the torments of suffering. My tears and deep distress
journeyed with me through the long hours of the night,
but with the light of morning – amazingly - there was hope!



My loving God, your heard my desperate pleas for help, and
you graciously answered my prayers. I now rejoice in the
generous goodness, of my merciful and forgiving God.
I sing praises all day long to my amazingly forgiving God.



In my arrogance, I thought I had it all! I was on top of the world,
everything was mine! I boasted of my prowess! I bragged of my skills!
O how foolish I was! How stupid! Then everything fell in a heap!
It was all over! As our father Samuel said: ‘How the mighty are fallen!’



In my shame and bewilderment I cried out to the Lord my God:
‘Can you hear me and forgive me? I am no use to you dead!
Ashes cannot sing praises to you, O my God! Please turn all this
foolishness around again, so I can again sing your praises!’



Wonder of wonders! Joy upon joy! I have ripped off my mourning
shroud and put on my choir robes! I will sing your praises all day
and night. My thanks and praise will last forever; and from the
depths of my soul, I thank you, my Lord, my God and my Saviour.

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Acknowledgements:
Unless stated otherwise, all Bible readings and extracts used in these weekly Prayers and Meditations are from
‘The New Revised Standard Version’ Copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

*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:
© 2010 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: easter3c_2010.pdf

© 2010 Joan Stott - " The Timeless Psalms" RCL Psalm Year C