Father God, the weather is unpredictable, but we know that You are constant and ever-sure.

Like the spring, we too are inconstant; often blown off course and shifting in the challenges and trials of life.

You know our frame, our limitations, our weaknesses. Despite our defenses, we falter, fail, and fall.

Help us to see that our effort at self-defense always leaves us short of the deliverance that can only be experienced in surrender to You. Give us the ability to see the folly of resisting our great need for Your divine care and grace in each moment of our lives.

Even we who long to reach upward can never scale to the perfect heights we seek. We give thanks that in lovingkindness You descend to us.

In the blessings of our daily experiences, in the bold assertions of Your word, in the beautiful community of the church- You show us more of what we can be.

Yet these gifts would be nothing without the Giver.

Incarnate in Bethlehem, walking in Galilee, dying outside Jerusalem, rising in power to die no more.

In Jesus, You come among us clothed in the dust and ashes of creation.

You do not offer an absentee love, but place the fullness of Yourself in our midst.

To the vulnerable, You are a protector.

To the self-sufficient, You are a servant.

To the prideful, You are a warning.

To the broken, You are a healer.

To the burdened, You are a liberator.

To the hungry and hopeless, You are Daily Bread and Living Water.

To the lost, You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In Your grace, You choose to place Your love upon us. You extend constant sustaining blessings and the opportunity for salvation.

What more could You do to give Yourself to us and for us?

Help us to see this love. Help us to accept it. Help us to experience it more and more fully, and help us to live our lives in response to it. In this season, let us choose to pass forward the love we have received.

In tense times and uncertain days, may our lives be marked by a Christ-like humility that silences the mouths of critics and opens the hearts of cynics.

Let us not be tossed by the stormy winds that threaten from both within and without, but let us instead be fixed and anchored to a love that cannot be shaken and will not be moved.

In Christ’s holy name and through His power we pray, amen.