A Prayer for Every Women on Mother's Day

Prayed by Pastor Bonnie McMaken and Rachel Wassink. A PRAYER FOR EVERY WOMAN ON MOTHER’S DAY For every woman filled with joy or sorrow or both this Mother’s Day, we as the church bless you and your essential vocation as a woman in the Kingdom of God. For a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised and honored in all the city for all that her hands have done. For every woman who has lost a child, For every woman who has said “yes” to life and given up a child for adoption, For every woman who welcomes a child she didn’t grow in her own body, For every woman who has never had a child but longs for one, We bless you. For every woman who has never known her mother, For every woman who has lost her mother, For every woman whose mother wasn’t safe, We bless you. For every woman who is raising a child on her own, For every woman who partners with her husband to raise children in the Kingdom of God, For every woman who grieves a prodigal child, We bless you. For every woman who lives under the shadow of the generational curse of dishonoring women, For every woman who was never empowered to use her gifts in the church or the world, For every woman who was demeaned, abused, trafficked, objectified, or belittled, We bless you. For every woman who manages a household, a business, a classroom, or a ministry, For every woman who brings forth life, justice, healing, and industry by the works of her hands or the sweat of her brow, For every woman who protects and fights and nurtures and loves fiercely, We bless you. For every mother and grandmother and aunt and cousin who loved and loves so well, For the spiritual mamas, neighbor mamas, birth mamas, adoptive mamas, sister mamas, grandmamas, god mamas, friend mamas, and pastor mamas. For every woman, and for every little girl learning to love, lead, laugh, and live from her church of mamas, We love you. We honor you. We rise up and call you blessed. May you be clothed in strength and dignity, able to laugh at what is to come. May you know the blessing of God the Father who, when he made you, said that you were very good. May you know the honor of Jesus, born of a woman, who dignified and cared for his mother Mary, and all women. May you know the safety and nurture of the church your mother, where you are born of water and the Spirit into the family of God. And may you, as a woman, be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to bear the image of God Almighty, and to give the gift of spiritual motherhood to the world around you. Amen. Written by Trevor & Bonnie McMaken for City of Light Anglican Church, 2016.