In the spirit of the Prophet Amos, the Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies prayed, "Help us to remember, O God, that from those to whom much has been given, much is expected."

Let us join our hearts and spirits in prayerful reflection.

To whom much is given, even more is asked.

We have been given the bounty of this beautiful day,
and we have been given the gift of the worship tradition that draws us together in this house of hope and memory,
of learning, of healing, of growing, and of serving.

We lift up grateful hearts.

We have been given the inspiration of our brothers and sisters in faith
Who walk with us the path of the free religious life,
who companion us in our joys and our sorrows
and who are ours, by some design of fate or necessity, to care for and to love,
to forgive and to cherish for this time of our lives.

We lift up grateful hearts.

We have been given minds with which to wonder, and to reason,
and we have been given voices to speak and to sing,
and to shout against injustice,
and we have hands to work and to build the better world we would have for ourselves and our children.
We are asked to use them all in the service of love and justice.

We lift up grateful hearts.

We have been given the divine spark
as children of God, all,
whose health and wholeness requires us to tend to the life of the soul.

In our rushing and our doing,
may we not forget whose we are
and what we truly are – "not human beings having a spiritual experience
but spiritual beings having a human experience."*

We lift up grateful hearts.

We ponder this mystery together, glad for one another,
blessed by the abundance of our lives
and called to give abundantly of ourselves to it.

Amen.

*Pierre Teilhard de Chardin