Liturgical Morning Prayer - Day 4
Welcome to morning prayers. We are going to use the same liturgy each day this week. We hope that as it becomes more familiar it will help us to place God in the centre of our hearts and thoughts. It has been translated into French, Spanish and Indonesian. I will lead in English but feel free to read it in whichever language is easiest for you.
The blue parts are the parts we read together. The reader will read the Scriptures. After the Psalm, you are welcome to pray silently or speak your praises out loud in whatever language you prefer to pray.
Opening sentences (all)
One thing I have asked of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life;
to behold the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
Who is it that you seek?
We seek the Lord our God.
Do you seek Him with all your heart?
Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Do you seek Him with all your soul?
Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Do you seek Him with all your mind?
Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Do you seek Him with all your strength?
Amen. Christ, have mercy.
Declaration of faith (all)
To whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life,
and we have believed and have come to know
that you are the Holy One of God.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,
King of endless glory.
Scripture reading:
We join with God’s people in praise and thanksgiving using the words of Psalm 34:1-3
Psalm 34:1-3 (NLT) (Reader)
I will praise the Lord at all times.
I will constantly speak his praises.
I will boast only in the Lord;
let all who are helpless take heart.
Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness;
let us exalt his name together.
Pause to pray either silently or out loud
Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV) (Reader)
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Pause to pray
Meditation (Leader)
Today’s meditation is in the form of a prayer for the Sabbath*
Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe. You are the Author of Love and Life. You have given us the opportunity to work this past week – the privilege of serving you and your Kingdom in visible and invisible ways. For the work of our hands and hearts, we thank you.
We thank you for the things we did out of duty and the things we did out of delight – for projects, demands, chores, sore muscles and acts of kindness—for all that was planned and unplanned. Lord, receive it as our gift to you.
For all that was left undone because of distraction or laziness, forgive us, Lord Jesus.
For all that was left undone because we obeyed the Spirit's leading, we recognise your handiwork and give you thanks.
Now, the Sabbath lies before us and we are ready to cross the threshold.
Lord Jesus, you are the Light of the world
You created and crafted this day of Sabbath Rest.
You bless it.
You crown it with glory. You call it holy.
Through it, you call us out of darkness into your love and light.
It is to be a day of refreshment and celebration.
It is a day of devotion and delight. Set apart since the beginning of time, you alone release us from the bondage of duty and demand.
As your chosen people, we will embrace this day of Sabbath Rest.
In keeping it, we remember you as our Creator and Rescue Redeemer. We do this now, with joy.
Enter our home and hearts today.
Almighty God, grant us and all our loved ones true rest on this Sabbath Day. May your presence drive out from among us anger and fear, worry and regret. Send your blessing upon us, that we may be people of the Word.
Heavenly Father,
We rejoice in the beauty of your world, the power of your Word,
the presence of your Holy Spirit,
and the love of family and friends.
It is from you we receive every good and perfect gift.
Open our eyes to see.
Giver of Life and Love,
Grant us your peace this day and always, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Prayers for others
We offer our prayers for our families to encounter God’s presence and rest
Pause to pray
We ask God to renew the strength of all participating in the Global Gathering, especially the staff team, Pastor Simon and the staff of the hotel.
Pause to pray
Canticle (all)
Christ, as a light
illumine and guide me.
Christ, as a shield
overshadow me.
Christ under me;
Christ over me;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Christ as a light;
Christ as a shield;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.
Blessing (all)
May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever he may send you.
May he guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May he bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders, he has shown you.
May he bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.
Acknowledgements:
The liturgy and closing prayers are taken from the Northumbria Community morning prayer: https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/morning-prayer/
Sabbath prayer: *https://runhardrestwell.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sabbath-Prayer.pdf
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05/2025 Global
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Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI
Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities. In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on. On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot. This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them. Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.
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