Concluding prayer
Scripture
“Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life. Those who overcome will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children” (Revelation 21:6-7).
Meditation
In our arrogance, we broke Creation
causing omegas to follow alphas,
dooming every story to an ending.
But you embraced what we fractured, shattered
and met The End by living into it.
Not erasing it, as we might propose
but redeeming it, rewriting the page
and turning our world upside down, causing
omegas to be preludes for alphas.
Prayer
Risen One, in death you declared finished what you set out to accomplish, and our world has never been the same. Even now, we see you turning the end of a season to the beginning of another. And no matter how great the darkness, how bleak the story may seem, the endings wrought by a world separated from you are only beginnings in the things you are about to create. Open our eyes, as we leave your way for our own, to see what is already done. And rejoice that no ending we can write cannot be turned into a beginning that leads us to your embrace. Amen.
Dismissal
Let us now go into the world filled with the love, the mercy, and the renewing power of Love Incarnate.
Thanks be to God.