Grounded Prayer

Prayed at Decatur First UMC, Decatur, GA
July 19, 2026

God your Word keeps bringing us back to earthly things - 

soil and seeds, 

rocks and weeds, 

birds and wheat.  

We want so much to be enlightened spiritual beings, 

above the things of this world, 

and you keep calling us back to the ground beneath our feet.  

Give us patience as we learn how to be human.

Help us to embrace Jesus, who came to model humanity for us.

Give us humility to do the simplest human things - 

To feel our feelings, 

To be honest with ourselves and others, 

To rest and move,

To live in harmony with the world around us,

And to know that you are God and we are not.  

We lift up to you the concerns of our hearts - 

Our friends and family who are struggling, 

The brokenness of our world, 

The injustice that diminishes our humanity, 

We offer up to you that thing that we cannot let go of, 

The thing we think of too often,

The thing that blinds us to the goodness around us, 

The thing that makes us think we are either more or less than we are.  

We trust that when the time is right, 

you will separate the weeds from the wheat in us.

Until then, we surrender it to you, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

In lectionary year A, summer brings earthy Gospel readings that call us to be curious about familiar and basic things. This prayer was written with Matthew 13 in mind.