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World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, April 15, 2020

O God, you come to us wherever and however we might be. No matter how much we may not believe it, we are worthy of your love and grace. Therefore, we uplift to you all of our raggedy and incomplete prayers to you—the ones that fall from our lips, the ones that remain hidden within our hearts, and the ones that we might not know how to articulate yet. Dwell within us, Holy One, and speak to us from that place where the deep calls to deep.

Maker of Heaven and Earth the beauty of creation reveals your glory and the gifts of abundance that you have given to us. You call us to care for the world around us just as you care for us and we pray that you guide us in our efforts to be good stewards.

We are grateful for the agreements being negotiated between the United States, Japan, South Korea and Canada to bolster their carbon emission reduction targets in anticipation of Earth Day next week.
We pray for indigenous islanders from Torres Strait, Australia bringing a case to the UN Human Rights Committee with the hope to protect their homes from rising sea levels, coastal erosion and flooding in recent years as a result of climate change.

Great Creator, we give thanks for the large and small ways that we recognize our lives and wellbeing are mutually tethered to one another. And yet, so often we fall short of this calling. Instead we scar the earth with markers of destruction, dominion, and death. May your transformative, re-creating grace be made known where life is broken, abused, and oppressed. God, give us a vision so that we might see the world as you it– interconnected and interdependent.

O Source of Light and Life, we pray for the places where violence and tyranny cause so much suffering. We pray for peoples living with trauma and uncertain futures. May greed and hatred loosen its grip on humanity. Holy Spirit, descend upon the many corners of this world in need of your saving love and abiding peace.

Our souls are weary with the news of the death of Daunte Wright in Minnesota, United States. Another Black life cut too short at the hands of a police officer.
Our grief hangs heavy learning of a militant attack of a humanitarian hub in Borno State, Nigeria.
Our hearts break for the families of the 20 children who died in school fire in Niger.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

Shepherd, gather in your hurting and scattered flock. Protect the vulnerable, neglected, and marginalized where peace is tenuous, and fear is mounting.

We pray for the Syrian refugees in Denmark as it becomes the first EU country to deprive them of their asylum status, even as Syria remains shattered.
We pray for the people of Afghanistan as the United States decides to withdraw from the country by September 11^th. This marks the end to the longest war in US history, but it remains unlikely that fighting within the country will end.
We pray for the people of Iran as its political leadership has decided to boost its uranium enrichment to 60 percent, its highest level ever.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

And, God, the pandemic still remains the backdrop to our lives. We are grateful for the arrival of vaccinations and the glimmer of hope that they bring. Yet, the World Health Organization tells us that the pandemic is “a long way from over.” It is hard not to be discouraged by the news that the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines might have some adverse side effects. Hold in your safekeeping all those working tirelessly and overtime to research these vaccines. Holy Spirit come alongside all who are sick, caregiving, and on edge. Comfort those in places, such as India and Brazil, where the pandemic still rages on.

Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

God, sometimes life is too much for us to bear on our own. Remind us that you keep track of our sorrows, collect our tears in a bottle, and record each one. Please share your peace which surpasses all understanding with everyone who is hurting and mourning this day. Equip us to confront hardship with strength and justice.

Christ, you came to this world to share with us a proclamation of love. Let us be extravagant in our sharing of grace. When see the empty tomb, may we be filled with the promise of hope, possibility of life, and celebrate your resurrection. May we drench the world with our outpouring of your love.

We pray this in your name, Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, March 4, 2021

As most of you know, World in Prayer is written by a team whose members take turns writing the prayers. And I, who am writing this week – I ran out of words a long time ago. Trapped in what seemed like near-isolation by the pandemic; anguished by its resulting ever-growing number of deaths and illnesses, poverty, homelessness, job loss and starvation; drained by the constant threats to human rights throughout the world, I ran out of words in which pray.

A nature photographer by avocation, I fled, desperate for the solace of distraction, to spend long hours in solitude at nearby wildlife refuges. For long months, it felt as if I’d lost the ability to pray. It took even longer for me to realize that the images seared into my mind and camera, of sunsets and migrating waterfowl, winter-bare trees and the early hints of spring, had been heart-felt prayers for the world all along.

As the sun sets, the sandhill cranes return from foraging in the fields to settle in quiet shallow ponds where they will be safe from night predators.

Holy one, your glory shines forth in the sunset and the sunrise. Open our eyes, that we will see with awe every person, every place we encounter each day; that we may find safe places to rest, and healing for our hearts. Fill us with joy – joy such as imbues the viral video of Gurdeep Pandher of Yukon, Canada, who was so happy to get his Covid-19 vaccination that he went to a frozen lake to dance Bhangra on it “for joy, hope and positivity, which I’m forwarding … for everyone’s health and wellbeing.” May we all dance with such joyous abandon!

When the leaves are gone, all you can see are the bare bones – and strength.

The Covid-19 pandemic has stripped away so much that we thought we needed, O God. It has brought us back to the realization that family, community, connections between one another, the basics of touch and hugging and face-to-face communication – those are our roots and our strength. Bring us back together, across borders, languages and economic divides. As more vaccines are approved and enter production and distribution, please, dear God, hasten the day when we can share birthdays and weddings, comfort the ill, grieve together with the dying, take comfort in common worship, and rejoice in common meals. As the pandemic eases, let us not forget our roots. Hold us fast, above all, to love.

Thousands of geese migrate through and over-winter in Central California.

What can we learn from your geese, O God? They cover the fields, nibbling and gossiping. Then one, then another, leaps into the air. At first small clumps, then with a rush, nearly all take off, milling uncertainly in the air until one takes the lead and they head out in the classic “V” formation. Watch closely, and you’ll see that it is not a single leader who leads the group the whole way, but rather an intricate weaving that moves the birds from one position to another, so that none get overtired, and the whole flock is preserved. How do they know whether the first to take flight is foolhardy or wise, and whether the few that remain behind are greedy for one last bite, or accurately discerning that there was no real danger in the first place? How do they know when it’s time to move on, and where to go next?

Guide us wisely, as leaders and as followers, and as we move back and forth between those roles. Enable us to put the needs of the human “flock” above our own desires and inclinations, and the wisdom to choose leaders who will do the same. Grant us the courage to change, when change is needed, to stand up against oppression when endangered, to maintain that which is good – no matter the pressures against us. Inspire us to take our turn, to share in the responsibilities, of weaving our communities together. Especially this week, we pray for:

El Salvador, after this past Monday’s legislative elections. President Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party appears to have achieved the 2/3rds majority needed to pass laws, appoint the next attorney general and members of the supreme court. Although his promises to the nation were popular, this would eliminate all checks and balances over his power, and observers warn of the possibility of the country becoming an authoritative dictatorship.
United States, as many leaders in the Republican party continue to spread the lie that the election was stolen from former President Trump, and appear more determined to consolidate power than to work for policies that polls show are highly popular among their own constituents.
The many countries that consistently block internet access during protests or elections – thereby also blocking millions of people from working, studying, accessing health care, getting vital information about the pandemic, or buying essential goods or making payments. Among the worst offenders in 2020, according to a report just released by Access Now, were India, Yemen, Belarus, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.

Help us to know when to wait, when to rise, whom to follow, and where You are calling us to go. Help us to be the flock you are calling us to be.

So many different species sharing a narrow spit of land!

Dearest One, you give us so many models of different species existing cooperatively together. A raft of many kinds of waterfowl. A stream where egrets, herons and sandhill cranes are fishing scant feet from one another. A utility pole with hawk eating its noonday frog – while smaller birds crowd the wires to and from the pole. How can we not pray for our lives to be rebuilt to make gracious space for all your people?

In Afghanistan, talks resumed this week between the Taliban and the government, with the Taliban maintaining that they want a political resolution and denying responsibility for the increasing spate of targeted assassinations of judges, journalists and activists.
In response to escalating allegations of human rights violations against Uighurs being detained in Xinjiang camps, the Chinese government is mounting a public relations campaign to discredit the female witnesses.
Before the pandemic started, Thailand had millions of migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia, who were the primary breadwinners for their families back home and who worked in areas as diverse as manufacturing, agriculture, and domestic work. Many are now stranded, unemployed and penniless; unable to find jobs in either their native lands or in Thailand.
As part of its efforts to wind down a Trump-era policy that required asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while waiting for their U.S. immigration court hearings, the Biden administration on Friday admitted the first group of 25 migrants. The group included people from Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Cuba. Plans call for the pace to increase next week to up to 300 people per day. Instead of being held in detention centers, the migrants will be referred to local shelters and groups like Jewish Family Service for temporary housing during their Covid-19 quarantine period, before being released to join family or friends elsewhere in the U.S.

God, you have given us a vision of the human family, your beloved family, all gladly living side-by-side. Yet the logistics of finding enough shelter, jobs, and resources are daunting. Give us a vision of those details, too! Make it possible for every single human being to have a place to call home.

I was expecting to watch birds, when a river otter delighted me by climbing onto the bank and taking an ecstatic and wriggly mud bath.

Surprise us, O God, by your presence when we least expect it. Surprise us with more stories like those of 32-year-old Yenenesh Tilahun, who opened a beauty salon in the largest red-light district of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia – to aid sex workers who would not seek other help out of shame. But while styling their hair, they talk, and she has been able to keep many from being trafficked, while providing practical help and guidance to others.

Surprise us, O God, by your presence in those who care and help, who honor us with their stories, who walk beside us. Surprise us by your presence in those who mourn, and in those who dance with joy. Delight us, O God, in your ecstatic and wriggly presence.

Almost buried amid the rapidly growing spring grass, the tiny flowers were less than 1/2″ each.

Dearest One, it’s so easy to forget how much we need one another, to forget that the flowers need the bee every bit as much as the bee needs the flowers. And yet, as winter turns to spring, we take hope. We take hope as we hear that the research the led to the Covid-19 vaccines has also pointed the way to a promising malaria vaccine – the first in the world. We take hope as we learn that the state of Kerala, India, has started a program to install solar panels on 75,000 homes, in a way that will make them affordable for even the most impoverished. We take hope when we read about coffee farmers’ cooperatives in Nicaragua that are taking the lead in helping the farmers diversify, reforest, and improve the soil in response to the 2020 hurricanes that destroyed 10-40% of the coffee crop.

We take hope at the news that African countries have committed to restoring 250 million acres of degraded soil – an area the size of Egypt – by 2030. And that international investors have committed over $14 billion to restore the Sahel. In Niger and Burkina Faso alone, thousands of farms have regreened more than 12.5 million acres.

We take hope from the many across the world who are committed to making sure that the lessons of this pandemic do not go to waste. That inequities and injustices in health care, infrastructure, education and economies revealed by the crisis do not get swept under the rug again. That we remember that issues that we had long thought to be insoluble, in light of the urgency of the pandemic have already proven to be both immediately necessary and thoroughly possible.

Dearest One, we take hope from the lessons of the tiny flowers and the bee, the sunset and the still pool of water, the barren tree, the soaring geese, the resting ducks, and the unexpected otter. You are our teacher, our strength, our guide, our hope.

Blessed be your name, forever and ever.
Amen.

World News this Week in Prayer, Thursday, August 13, 2020

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.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, July 2, 2020

The World in Prayer team member who wrote this week’s prayers has spent the past 6 weeks catching, taming, and finding homes for a litter of feral kittens. It has, she says, definitely affected how she understands God, and how she prays for the world. “You’ll have to forgive me,” she writes, “if these prayers are rather – well – kitten-shaped.”

I. Courtship. They appeared in my yard, the terrified but oh-so-proud young mama cat, and her four just-starting-to-explore adorable kittens. Me, I spent long hours sitting absolutely still. Marveling. Waiting. For them to get used to my scent. For them to get used to my presence. For them to get used to my voice.

And I thought with awe – and wonder – and thanksgiving – about God. Our God, who loves us with such patient adoration. Waiting, for us to notice God with us. Waiting for us to abandon fear, for curiosity. Waiting for us to dare to approach. Waiting for us to dare to be loved.

Holy and loving God, we adore you and we praise you, because you love with infinite patience even those that the world despises, ignores, or rejects:

The Oromo – the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, where unrest has spread after the death and funeral of 34-year-old singer Hachalu Hundessa. His songs advocating their rights have become anthems in a wave of protests in that country.
More than 40,000 impoverished people have been evicted from their homes since March in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, primarily in communities already displaced by violence, droughts, or floods.
Strawberry pickers brought from Morocco to Spain are not considered essential workers, and are not being provided even the most basic hygiene needed to protect them against the new coronavirus.
Sex workers in Thailand (more than 125,000 of them, from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam), as well as in Bangladesh (an estimated 100,000) – have been jobless and facing abuse from their dissatisfied brokers since the coronavirus pandemic forced bars and other entertainment venues to close. For many, this illegal work is the only way they can survive and provide for their children.
According to the United Nations, the pandemic is reversing progress on ending child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM). An additional 13 million girls could be married off and 2 million more could undergo FGM in the next decade, beyond what would have been expected.
Indigenous Amazon communities in Brazil, who have no immunity to external diseases and whose communal lifestyle rules out social distancing – and who are not receiving adequate help during the pandemic from the Brazilian government.

II. Trapping. I put out food. Each day, moving a little bit closer. Each day, with breath held, waiting for them to come eat. Then the food went into the cat carrier, and if they wanted it, they had to go inside. And then one day, while they were eating, I gently shut the door, and brought them inside my house.

And I prayed…for all who don’t know if a sweet enticement will turn out to be a trap or an opening to a world of joy. For all who are trapped. For all who are being freed. For all who hold open doors to new life.

Holy and gracious God, whose will it is always to bless, stretch out your protecting arms over:

Hong Kong, as China’s new “national security law” for Hong Kong takes effect, criminalizing what had been protected speech (i.e., the right to criticize the Chinese government), and allowing mainland Chinese security personnel to legally operate in Hong Kong with impunity.
The dead, the missing, and the grieving after a landslide at a jade mining site in northern Myanmar killed at least 162.
The United States, where there are way too many people who believe their right not to wear masks or take other public health precautions to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is more important than protecting one another; and many others who cannot understand that the best way to have a healthy economy is to have healthy population.
Scientists in Canada, South Africa, and Zimbabwe who are helping Botswana try to determine the cause of the “completely unprecedented” deaths of more than 350 elephants since May

III. Delight. As I had known they would, the kittens came to trust. They learned to play, to pounce, to wrestle. They discovered that being petted was Very Good, Very Very Good. The legs grew longer, and the purrs grew stronger, and my arms or my lap were usually filled with a cuddle puddle. They learned to ask – often way too loudly, and way too early in the morning – for the food and loving they craved.

And I heard God’s prayer for us: What would this world be like, if we could hold each other in patient love? If we could trust, without pushing, that just loving and waiting in love were enough to transform the world? What if we could love enough to truly hear one another, and to answer – even if it’s momentarily inconvenient – with infinitely deep love?

Holy and delighted God, smile with us in pleasure, as the restorative power of the Black Lives Matter movement spreads across the world:

In France, where the global anti-racism protests led the armed forces ministry to provide local authorities with a guide to 100 Africans who fought for France in World War II, so that streets may be named after them. Presenting the list, Junior Defense Minister Genevieve Darrieussecq said, “the names, faces, lives of these African heroes must become part of our lives as free citizens, because without them we would not be free.”
In the United Kingdom,where the Lloyd’s of London insurance market apologized for its “shameful” role in the 18th and 19th Century Atlantic slave trade, and pledged to fund opportunities for Black and ethnic minority people.
In Nigeria, where leaders of the Igbo people hope the BLM movement will inspire similar change for their people, many of whom are the descendants of slaves and still face significant discrimination.

IV. Setting free. The time came. I wish I could have kept them all. I wish I could have kept that wild, but maybe-just-beginning-to-trust mama cat, and taught her how to be loved. I fell in love with the kittens, and wished they could have stayed with me forever. But they were ready. Feral mama, still very wary, was spayed and went to live on a friend’s ranch, where she will be cherished and invited into as much love as she can accept. The kittens were chosen with love, and this weekend will be on their way to wonderful families.

And I heard again God’s prayer for us: that incredible, deep, wanting all to be well with us. With every single one of us. With every single fiber of this planet, of this universe. With every single nation. Filling us with love…and then sending us forth, in love, to be love.

Holy and amazing God, rejoice with us at every tiny sign that your love is at work in the world, that the Kingdom of God is indeed at hand:

From Kenya to Tanzania, Ethiopia to Malawi, Liberia to South Africa, tens of thousands of ordinary African women battle Covid-19 in their communities. Recruited and trained by governments and charities, the unsung army of mostly female and mostly unpaid community health workers are going door to door in remote villages and urban slums, talking about the virus, showing residents how to wash hands or don a mask, patiently answering their questions. Regardless of the risk to themselves. They do it in love.

And God said, go forth in love, to be love.
Amen.

World News in Prayer – Thursday, 4 June, 2020

Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
So why has the healing of my dear people
not come about? ~ Jeremiah 8:22

Is there no balm in Gilead, Holy God? For we, your people, desperately need a balm, a healing, a sense that the desperate pain we are feeling will come to an end. Even as people walk the streets of more than 75 cities in the United States of America, demonstrating against the deaths of African-American citizens: George Floyd, Steven Taylor, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbrey, among far too many others at the hands of the police, others are demonstrating in solidarity in London, England; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Berlin, Germany; Auckland, New Zealand; Paris, France; Copenhagen, Denmark; Milan, Italy; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Dublin, Ireland; Toronto, Canada; Perth, Australia; and many more places across the globe.

We need a balm, God of Love and Peace, a healing of the sin of racism. We need to be made whole.

All of this comes in the midst of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, which continues to sicken and kill people throughout the world, even as governments disagree on how best to contain and control the spread of the virus. Italy is reopening its borders, while the death toll in Brazil has passed 30,000, and cases in the African continent exceed 160,000, even as statistics every-where are uncertain and knowledge of the behavior of the virus remains the subject of intense medical and immunological research.

We need a balm, God of All People, a healing for our troubled bodies and spirits.

Around the world, situations of pain and threat demand our attention, and yours, O God. We grieve:

the death of Dr. Hu Weifeng in China, after four months of fighting Covid-19. He had been treating patients at Wuhan Central Hospital when he was stricken.
with the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and PiniKura People (PKKP) of Western Australia at the destruction of 46,000-year-old Aborginal caves by mining giant, Rio Tinto, last Sunday.
with the people of Mumbai, India, as Cyclone Nisarga makes landfall, with destructive winds and driving rains, threatening life and property.
with a barely-literate, poor Christian couple in Pakistan who have spent the past 6 years in jail awaiting an appeal of the death sentence they received for “blasphemy”, for allegedly sending text messages insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
the disappearances of two activists, Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi, in Wuhan, China, after their continued reporting about the Covid-19 crisis in that province, as families and friends fear they may have been killed.

We need a balm, God of Hope, a healing for the broken places in our world.

Driven to our knees by the loss and pain, our minds and hearts filled with questions and doubts, our spirits often at their lowest ebb in these recent days, we turn to you, Father-Mother God, in desperation, knowing that only in you can we find comfort, healing, a balm for those things we cannot seem to get right on our own. And, though we are not yet able to sing in our churches, we each and all can sing on our own, so we lift our quavering and tear-filled voices:

There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole;
there is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin-sick soul.

Sometimes I feel discouraged
and think my work’s in vain,
but then the Holy Spirit
revives my soul again.

There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole;
there is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin-sick soul.

Amen. Let it be so.

World News in Prayer – Thursday, March 25, 2020

Conversations will not be cancelled.
Relationships will not be cancelled.
Love will not be cancelled.
Songs will not be cancelled.
Reading will not be cancelled.
Self-care will not be cancelled.
Hope will not be cancelled. *

Beloved, how are we to pray in these times of pandemic, when country after country imposes stringent stay-at-home orders? When schools and restaurants and businesses are closed, and all public gatherings banned? When what we do to relax and let go of tension…when the ways we come together to celebrate birthdays and weddings and graduations…when what we rely on to grieve and reassure and comfort one another in funerals and hugs and touch….when these have all been closed off? When life seems to be increasingly put on hold while we shelter in place, and even those who like long stretches of time alone are finding the walls starting to close in?