Holy Creator,
You are at our Beginning and our Ending, the one who wakes us in the morning and settles us to sleep at night. When we move through the fog of uncertainty, bring a piercing light of a clarity, even if just for a moment. When we want to plop down in heaps of grief, abide with us until we are granted the strength to go on. And when we want to dance with excitement or joy over something that might seem insignificant to others, show us how to celebrate truly. Even while socially distanced, reveal the ways that we do not dance and rejoice alone. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Loving Lord, We pray for our world, as we move through more days, more deaths, more recoveries, and more challenging conversations around Covid-19. This week we pray particularly for those working with coronavirus in India, the UK, the United States, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa. No one person is experiencing this on their own. No one community makes decisions by themselves. Teach us how to live and move and experience our being as your people, whose responsibilities are bound with each and other, beings whose lives are wholly dependent upon you. Reveal your presence to those who are grieving or anxious and in social isolation. Guide each of us towards a fuller understanding of this disease and our interdependence on all of Creation.
We pray for our neighborhoods around the world, where protests by community members over life and death concerns continue, even after media vans have moved away. We pray for every village or city where people seek to safely gather in the name of peace, asking for recognition and reparations for their neighbors. This week we pray particularly for those in Belarus, Hong Kong, China, and Portland, USA. Show us how to speak words of solidarity that matter. Illuminate for us how to take actions that make a difference. Center us in you. Grant us your vision and hope. Teach us how to walk with each other down the long road of justice.
We pray for Beirut, Lebanon and all Lebanese people, as their communities are convulsed by the aftereffects of the ammonium nitrate explosion. Hold the people close through their devastation. Guide all government proceedings through their tumult. Bind up the brokenhearted and give strength to the rescue workers. Teach us how to support and accompany their journey towards recovery and justice. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Advocating Spirit, As students, teachers, parents, and communities face decisions around the start of school—all around the world, and particularly throughout the United States–grant wisdom, discernment, and compassion to those who are making decisions on behalf of our most vulnerable.
As our world continues to wake up to the effects of climate change, help us learn how to combat the harm from the recent oil spill in Mauritania. We hear of the split, collapse and now free-floating Milne ice shelf – the last in the Arctic a marine protected area known as the Tutvaijuittuq in Nunavut, Canada.
Show us how to live alongside and aid climate refugees all over the world. As we open our eyes to the world’s needs, we pray that you will abide with those whom we do not know by name, whose stories we read on a quick scroll through our feed. Be with those affected by the mud slide in Kerala, India. Be with those caught in the cross fire of violent battles in Mocimboa da Praia, Mozambique. Be with those living through the emergence of deadly conflicts in Port Sudan, Sudan. Breathe into the lives of these, your beloved children. Bring your comfort, your power, your love, where your children are crying out.
We sometimes do not have words to pray as we ought. Pray through us with your Spirit.
In all these things, we discover again our finitude. In all these moments, we place ourselves back into your arms of mercy and grace. Show us how to delight in what is good, to confront what is cruel, to heal what is damaging. Give to us a discerning strength to move into the next moment, the next day, the next act of compassion and courage.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.
In all these things, abide with us, O Spirit and Word of Comfort and Truth.
Amen.
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