Opening Litany for the 24th

Psalm 42 and Fredrick Buechner

Pastor: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.

Congregation: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while friends question all day long saying, "Where is your God?"

Pastor: These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.

Congregation: Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise the Lord, my Savior and my God.

Pastor: My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

Congregation: By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life.

Pastor: I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

Congregation: Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise the Lord, my Savior and my God.

Pastor: Turn your attentions, your desires, your longings to the still small voice of God

Congregation: God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don’t, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.
(Fredrick Buechner, “Telling Secrets” pg.32)

Pastor: Welcome to Worship at Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church.

Congregation: Where we are Inspired by God’s Love to Praise, Nurture and Serve.