A Prayer for All Workers

Loving, Working God,

On this Labor Sunday, we remember that you first trusted us with working and caring for creation in the beginning. By your creativity and within the limits you’ve set for us, you have trusted us to bring fruitfulness out of barrenness. We ask your blessing on us as we continue to work and care for a world that produces thorns among flowers— anxiety among flourishing. Where work is desired but is hard to come by, we pray for your intervention and provision.

There are so many kinds of work we do in this world: work in the home or in the community, work for pay or as volunteers, work as leaders or work while being led. Regardless of the work we do, help us to be an extension of your blessing.

Creator God, help us to build a new world in the midst of the old.

Just God, help us to amplify and protect the voices of the oppressed.

Triune God, help us to be brokers of peace among the contentious.

Generous God, help us to model abundance in the face of scarcity.

We pray for the coming of a world where the work of our hands no longer produces uncertainty. 

And we ask these things knowing that you give us the courage and strength to live out our faith in the workplace as well as in the sanctuary.

Amen.

Adapted from a prayer written by Dr. Edith Rasell, Minister for Economic Justice of the United Church of Christ.