I was looking back over some past services to see if I could adapt one I did four years ago for a visiting preach I am doing on Mothering Sunday.  Alas it won't readily translate (which is a shame cos it was a good one!) but I liked this prayer that I wrote and which may be of use to someone else.

God who is love, how can we express our love for you?

You love us even before we are born, as a tiny embryo hidden away in our mother’s womb.

You love us as we are born, eyes squinting in the light, lungs filling with air, and a midwife’s hands holding us securely.

You love us when we are toddlers, waddling clumsily, chubby fists clinging to a sister’s hand, and as we place a sloppy kiss on a brother’s cheek.

You love us when we are children, playing for hours with friends, making dens, dressing up or going on secret expeditions, discovering the joy of being alive.

You love us when we are teens, bodies rapidly changing and ideas whirling around our minds, trying to answer the question “who am I?”

You love us when we are adults, juggling work and play, forming relationships, shaping our own future.

You love us when we are parents, striving to nurture our own children.

You love us when we are childless, sharing the bittersweet searching, the freedom or the pain.

You love us when we are elderly, grandparents or not, feeling with us the advance of years, the contentedness to be, the release from the need to achieve.

You love us as life ends. As lungs still and eyes close for the last time, you are there.

God who is love, who loves us through the whole of life, we praise you for the wonder of that love.
Amen.

I am being naughty this week.  Not massively, but knowingly doing something that will annoy some of the good people at D+1.  It is cluster pulpit exchange Sunday (or preacher exchange as someone who is very literal pointed out) and it is my turn to go to the last vestige of "Green Hymnbook is the only true hymnal" in this area.  They have a nice little set of Mission Praise which used to be used by the morning congregation but the evening folk hated it with a passion (I think it's that way round anyway).  Now they have combined into one service and the order I've been sent says quite clearly BHB.  So here's my bit of mischief - sing the three (out of four) hymns that are in the green book from Mission Praise.

I do love my little congregation who, since we moved over to service sheets, sing from any source I come up with and are none the wiser.  This means they've sung loads of things they'd otherwise have objected to and enjoyed them.  Nowt so queer as folk, as the saying goes.