Holden Evening Prayer

Let my prayer rise up like incense before you. 

​I have now listened to two of the Holden Prayer Services and I am reminded powerfully each time of many things. I am reminded that this very service sung every Wednesday at a Lutheran Church in Oxnard was one of the major reasons I joined the Lutheran church. I remember how simple the service is. How little needs to be present for profundity to reach out and touch us. Some singers, a piano and some readings and I am again transported to the breadth and depth and height of my God.

The lifting up of my hands as an offering to you. 

The song that disrupts my thought processes and causes tears to streak down my cheeks is the one sung like a canticle. The chorus is the above two headings “Let my prayer rise up like incense before you. The lifting up of my hands as an offering to you.” Somehow these words and music must have been put together under special spiritual dispensation to reach right into my soul and stop all my dithering and my to-ing and fro-ing and make me sit at God’s feet and listen.
I have for many years now used this song to reenergize me to what is important.
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Choir, readers, musicians – Thank you for this re-gifting of the Holden Evening Prayer Service.

God of mercy, hold us in love.

-Bob Blough, CGS Council