For 3rd Sunday After Epiphany Year c, Also Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

OPENING PRAYER
Gift-giver, you call us together,
with our different gifts, our different ideas, our different tastes. 
You call us together,
to share what makes us special, to build each other up, to serve each other in love. 
You call us together,
knowing that we need all parts of the body if we are to be whole. 
You call us together,
to sing, to pray, to listen, to speak. To be refreshed so that we can go out and serve. 
You call us together in the name of the One who taught his friends to pray saying...

PRAYER FOR AND ASSURANCE OF GRACE

God you have given each of us many gifts,

but sometimes we can not recognize what gift we have to share, so we hide it under a bushel.

God you remind us that all gifts are needed,

but sometimes we let ourselves be convinced that some gifts are more special than others.

God you call us to work, to live, to love together as parts of one body,

but sometimes we decide that membership in the body is limited by our understandings.

God, for the times we have ignored or mislabelled Your gifts, for those times we have cut another off from the body,

We offer words of repentance, we ask for forgiveness and grace.

...time of silent prayer...

God is the giver of MANY gifts. God is the Creator of the ONE body. God is slow to anger and quick to forgive. God helps us to share and honour the gifts of all, God helps us to heal the wounds and reunite the body. We are forgiven, loved, and accepted.

Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Amen 

COMMISSIONING:
You are the hands and feet of God in Grande Prairie
You are called to soothe suffering, to live with compassion, to build up God's loving peace.
So as you leave this place, how will you live?
We go from this place of worship to share the gifts we have been given.
We go from this time of worship to build up the Body of Christ.
We go from this holy space to carry the Holy to the world around us.
Go in love, go in peace, go with God.
Amen.