World in Prayer

World News this Week in Prayer – Thursday, 24 October 2019

Creator God, we give thanks for the privilege of praying. Hear us as we try to pray for our world.

Our world seems to be surround by protests.
We pray for those in Chile and Ecuador who protest against income inequality.
We pray for those who protest about corruption in Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon.
We pray for those who protest for political freedom as in Hong Kong, China, and Barcelona, Spain.
We pray for those who protest activities leading to climate change from New Zealand to Europe.

In all these protests and many others friendships form and strengthen. We give thanks that it takes time to grow old friends. We give thanks for the new friends we meet today for the first time.

We pray for those who need friends, for whatever reason, as we recognise the interweaving of the causes of these protests. Help us to share the friendship of Jesus who saw income inequality, corruption, political constraint and the devastation of human action and overturned tables in protest.

Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer- Thursday, December 20, 2018

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Luke 4:18-19, Isaiah 61:1,2

Oh Lord,

We pray for those who are silenced because of oppression, whose words no one hears. You brought your Christ light to the world. Help us to remember, to know and live in this great love. Help us to spread the Good News.

You hear the sobbing and quaking fear of a child. You see the tears and hear the weeping of parents as families are torn apart.  You hear the cries of children isolated for days, weeks, and months from their families.  We call, we pray for the release of the over 140 children still separated from their families because of U.S. policy. They are not forgotten. How many more hunger at borders, camps and detention centers around the world? Help us to practice mercy with others, the mercy you have given us.

We pray for those who are speaking for release of the imprisoned, the captive and those suppressed. Help us to find our way in doing the same, in small acts of kindness and generous hospitality.

Help us in our silences when we can’t find the words and when we do speak, when we try to polish the words to get them just right and when we stumble and stutter and struggle to speak to you. Open our hearts that we may love with kind words, true words, thoughtful words and necessary words.

Help us to hold deeply in our hearts the truth that behind the published word there are the journalists who are working in harm’s way, taking risks as they interview those being silenced, photographing atrocities and bringing to our awareness unutterably evil deeds.

We pray for those who courageously investigate and report the news, as a tally released this week reports that 348 journalists are currently imprisoned and detained.  Sixty are held hostage and eighty were killed in 2018, the highest number ever.  We pray for those imprisoned and censored in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt.

Comfort families in their distress. Console journalist colleagues and sustain the news bureaus as they continue to shoulder their resolve in telling the stories and reporting facts in all corners of the world, rushing again and again to each new crisis and staying as conflicts continue over decades.  Help us to protect and defend these liberties.

Help us to hear one another’s words; to listen freshly, with curiosity, and to absorb what friends, family and strangers have to say. Calm our ever-present ability to deny, interrupt and discount.  Restore our sight to see Christ in the other.

We pray to grow in tolerance and kindness.

All this we ask in your name, in this season of Advent as the world swirls around us..

May your Peace and your Good News be received on this earth.

Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, 1 November 2018

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Revelation 22:1-2 

And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. Ezekiel 47:9

 

Dear God our Creator and Redeemer,

Help us to live in awe in this world, this day and in this moment.  Help us to understand with new eyes how you spoke the world into being and as it unfolds, even now, in this season, as wind and water move over earth.  Help us to hold sacred the lands.  Are we stewards or despoilers? Help us to understand how you restore and renew the world. Help us to see your grace at work.  We read of TheKofan people of Sinangoe in the Amazonwhoprotecting more than 79,000 acres of primary rainforest in their ancestral homeland in Ecuador. Theyhave won a landmark legal battle to defend one of its’ largest and most important rivers from mining claims.

And when will peace come like fresh water flowing through the many rivers of Ethiopia where 1.4 million of its 100 million people are displaced?  Help us to hear Ambassador Shalework Zewde’s words, “When there is no peace in country, mothers will be frustrated. Therefore, we need to work on peace for the sake of our mothers.”  Help us to see your grace at work as the two Houses elected their first female head of state.  Sustain this ancient land, stop the bloodshed and renew its peoples.

Be with the people and lawmakers of Sri Lanka, Germany and Brazil as leadership is changing and uncertainty grows.

And when will peace like the rains that come to Gaza in winter bring reconciliation and an end to the bloodshed and deprivation for the near 2 million Palestinians?  We mourn for the 210 killed and more than 18,000 wounded in the past 6 months during the weekly Friday protests along the Israeli border.  We pray for the brokering by Egypt for peace as refugees live with undrinkable tap water and only a few hours of electricity a day.  Only your mercy can cause these and other injustices to fall away.  In these days and weeks to come may your truth be known and received.

We watch and pray as the United States government has been ordered by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands to halt sanctions that it had placed on the exporting to Iran of medicine and medical devices such as incubators, food and agricultural commodities such as wheat and spare parts and equipment necessary to ensure the safety of civil aviation.  Open our eyes and hearts.  Help us to bend and bow to your commandment: to love you and to love one another.

Awaken us from the suffering and deep misery, the horrible loss of opioid addiction and death so prominent in both the United States and Canada. We pray that the US legislation signed into law this week known as the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act will indeed work swiftly, prioritizing children, adolescents, and families as this public health crisis continues to unfold.  We call on the Holy Spirit to guide our discerning as neighborhoods, towns, schools and workplaces find new resources to turn around this epidemic. We lift the tens of thousands who have experienced loss of loved ones.  Lord have mercy.

Shed your mercy on the grieving families and their community in Louisville, Kentucky, United States as an attempted break-in at a church and murder of two people raises the alarm of violence so often fueled by hate. Forgive us for our sins Lord.

We weep, we grieve, we shake our heads and we come together once again. The world watches as a young man’s ashes are laid to rest twenty years after a hate crime ended his life.  Again we despair, we groan and grieve as eleven worshipers at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA are murdered and six are injured. Guide us in these dark days where fear and hatred seem so common.  Will this violence end? Help us to continue our resolve for peace making amid such hate and deadly force.  In this time of mourning may we comfort each other as you have comforted us.  In the days to follow may we commit to the words of Micah, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  Help us to take those steps no matter how hard it seems and how impossible the way.

And as this day becomes night let us remember your tender power amidst all the little things:  the birds in migration, the little ones yet to be reunited with their families, the least of these, the forgotten, the unnamed, the isolated and imprisoned, those on the road and in hiding, the many suffering – we pray for these and call to You.  Hear our prayers.

Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, May 10, 2018

Lord, we come before you

Prayer is communication that invites at-one-ness with You, the source of our being.  We call you God, and as revealed in the flesh, Jesus.  We ask for empowerment. Transform us with the life-giving force of the Holy Spirit.  Make us channels of the your Eternal Love, Light, and Grace. Help us to continue this work of transformation, of ourselves and of all creation.

Lord, in your mercy hear us

As You are One, You call us to this oneness yet we are so divided by what should unite us, our religious beliefs, diverse cultures, resources and desires. You have shown us glimpses of Yourself according to what we are willing and able to receive, then, too often, we become exclusive and possessive.  Thinking we own the truth, we denigrate others.

We see this in the tensions in India between Hindus and Muslims leading to the torture, rape and murder of young girls.  Coptic Christians being attacked in Egypt. Conflict and sectarian violence continuing in Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Nigeria and elsewhere around the world.

Lord, hear us and forgive us

You call us to care and nurture all creation, yet so often we treat it cavalierly and out of greed, abuse our resources. The continuing deforestation of huge swathes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, and even in protected ancient forests such as Poland. New gigantic off-shore platforms near Australia are drawing natural gas resources to meet our insatiable greed for energy.

Lord, teach us stewardship and how to touch the earth lightly for the benefit of all and generations to come.

Lord, hear us and forgive us.

We give thanks for the work in the United Arab Emirates by scientists from Norway who have developed a method to pump liquid clay nano-particles into sandy desert so that crops are planted in seven hours instead of seven years. Water required to grow these crops is also reduced by up to 50%. The blooming of the desert is a closer reality.

We give thanks too for the female armed rangers in southern Zimbabwe who are protecting highly endangered elephants from poachers.  Unlike their male counterparts, they are not succumbing to corruption or pressure but are arresting poachers even from their own villages or families.  Often having survived abusive relationships, these women can now send their children to school and support them.

Lord, continue to strengthen those taking such creative action in solving problems we humans so often have created.

Lord, we bless your holy Name: hear us and bless us.

We continue to remember all who fear. Remember those experiencing natural disasters such as in Hawaii, U.S., and dust and electrical storms in India.  Guide our leaders as we watch such political posturing as between North Korea and the rest of the world. Give us discernment in the Iranian nuclear discussions and in the latest financial crisis in Argentina.  Comfort those experiencing the devastating wave of knife crimes in London, England among the young. Be with those imprisoned throughout the world without trial or justice, those lonely, those who feel they have no self-worth.

Help us to reach out as need presents itself in all its forms.  We have heard your Truth. Prompt us to act on it and live it in our daily choices and decisions.

Lord, hear and answer our prayers for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ who opened the way for Your kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Amen. 

World News This Week in Prayer – Thurs., Nov. 2, 2017`

Once again, dear God, once again we come to you in grief and anger. Once again terror has struck at the heart of New York City, U.S. Once again, we know the weeping of Rachel that is heard across Your creation. Once again, what You declared to be good has fallen short of Your glory. Once again the world village of sorrow grows larger and smaller at the same time. Once again the people of the United States join hands with Rohingya villagers in Myanmar, a family of grief united with Boston (U.S.) and Barcelona (Spain), Paris (France) and Orlando (U.S.), Israel and Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Once again tears mix with tears without concern for race, creed, loyalties. Once again we taste true communion in our remembrance of Christ’s own innocent death. Once again we know Good Friday, and Easter feels far away. Once again we know the power of hatred testing the power of love. Once again we seek for Good News. Once again we hear the tempter’s offer of shortcuts, if only we would bow.

Once again, Holy God, hear our cry, heal our spirits, touch our hurt, forgive our hatred, guide our steps, strengthen, strengthen, strengthen our every breath to be God-breathed. Amen.

 

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, 17 August 2017

We lift this prayer, written from the ancestral home of the llini, Miami, Shawnee, Dakota Sioux, Chickasaw, Winnebago, Delaware, Kickapoo, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Huron-Wyandot, and Sac-Fox tribes with full respect for their creativity and courage.

We lift this prayer that will be read within many other geographic and cultural contexts with full respect for the various ways you have inspired leaders and followers to make every human city, and even every human household more like your household, more like the City of God, your city.

We lift this prayer expecting within a few days an eclipse of the sun, and we hope to acknowledge it with the awe Job felt when you answered his feverish complaining with the assurance that there was much he failed to understand.

Indeed, there is so much we fail to understand:

  • violent racism in the United States, not to mention fear of migrants,
  • indefinite prison in Jordan to ‘protect’ abused women and girls,
  • the likelihood of a very long exile for South Sudanese refugees,
  • the hundreds dead and missing in flooding and mudslides in Nepal and Sierra Leone,
  • suicide bombings in Nigeria,
  • those killed and injured in terror attacks in Burkina Faso and Barcelona, Spain,
  • the dozens killed and over one hundred injured in a train collision in Egypt,
  • illnesses, injuries, and misfortunes, our own and of others.

Jolt us, we pray, out of our uncompromising certainties.
Explode our imaginations with new possibilities.
Teach us to accept those who hold opinions we cannot approve.
Guide us in protecting interests beyond our own.
Forgive us when we are in error.
Love us into joining you with compassion for all creation.

Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, July 27

The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple….
My eyes shed streams of tears because your law is not kept. Ps 119: 130, 136

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. Romans 8:26

Forgive us, Lord, for reducing your might, majesty, and power to fit our comfort zone. The news of world events overwhelms us. We can be assailed by doubts, fear, and despair while choosing to say that you are God over all. So often this masks, however scantily, our lack of faith and understanding.

Forgive us, Lord, we implore you.

Lord, hear us: may your Holy Spirit breathe life into our prayers.

This week, whether in the northern or southern hemispheres of our shared planet, bush-fires, floods, snow storms, thunder storms, drought, famine, and melting glaciers causing water levels to raise world-wide have brought havoc and devastation to millions. Behind such abstract figures are individual stories of people who are just like us.

We pray for and give thanks for all aid agencies and people helping their neighbours in this time of great need. Forgive us for our heedless use of resources not rightly ours. Teach us to touch the earth lightly and to live thoughtfully and in harmony with the generous provisions in Creation you have given for us and all your children.

Lord, hear us: may your Holy Spirit breathe life into our prayers.

We hear of wars and rumours of wars and violence in Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt and at local levels in all of our own countries. Hatred and fear of difference make us dehumanise our neighbours and inflate ourselves. We continue to pray for justice for all regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or politics. We long for the time when this will be the norm throughout the world. Prince of Peace, jolt us awake when we casually slide into indifference and cruelty to each other. May we follow your example in our daily lives.

Lord, hear us: may your Holy Spirit breathe life into our prayers.

We give thanks for the love and compassion for others often shown by wounded individuals. Jodi Ann Bickley from Birmingham, UK, who fights depression, has written over 4,000 letters of encouragement to complete strangers as part of her One Million Lovely Letters project started in 2013. These life-enhancing and life-changing letters have transformed the lives of the recipients and even helped youngsters in rural South Africa move beyond their experience of abuse and violence and marginalisation. Open us up to hear your prompts for loving acts you wish us to do and for the loving people you wish us to be.

Lord, hear us: may your Holy Spirit breathe life into our prayers.

Open our ears, glorious Lord Christ, to hear the music of your voice above the chaos of this world: the power of your love, your mercy for each one of us, and the wisdom and wonders of your law and commandments which promises to lead us from darkness to light. Amen.

World News in Prayer- Thursday, April 13, 2017

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24

We are stumbling on our way toward the day of Resurrection, gracious God. Stumbling and falling, sometimes crawling on our knees toward the cross, hoping that when we lift our tear-filled eyes, it will be empty, that the tomb will be empty, that your promise of New Life will indeed be real and we can sing with our hearts and voices:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

But these recent days, as we approach Good Friday, have been difficult ones in which to see the reality of Resurrection, filled as they have been with death and destruction:

  • The truck attack in Stockholm, Sweden, which killed four.
  • The explosion in Diyarbakir, Turkey, which injured at least four.
  • The fire gutting the Grande-Synthe Dunkirk migrant camp in France, home of 1500 migrants, with at least ten injured.
  • The two deadly blasts which hit Coptic Christian churches in Alexandria and Tanta, Egypt, killing more than forty people and injuring over 100, including several police officers.
  • The severe frosts and snowstorms affecting Central Europe in which at least 25 have died, mainly in Poland and Serbia. The weather is primarily affecting the homeless and refugees, with more harsh weather predicted in coming days.
  • The killing of Criminal court judge Raymond Myles shot outside his home in Chicago, Illinois,United States (USA).
  • The ever-rising death toll of refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea that, according to the UN Refugee Agency, rose to 5000 in 2016.
  • The building tensions between the USA and North Korea, in response to the air strike to Syria.
  • The USA drops the largest non-nuclear bomb ever made in Afghanistan.
  • The planned execution of eight men beginning the day after Easter by the State of Arkansas, USA.

And amid the darkness of Good Friday, we turn to you, Father/Mother God, not as we ought but as we are able, trying to discern our place, our role, in the healing of this hurting world, seeking to be the people you are continually calling us to be, seeking to find hope and joy and peace, so that we can sing with our hearts and voices:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

And soon, Easter will be upon us. The day of Resurrection will be here and our newly opened eyes encouraged by signs of New Life and Hope:

  • Malala Yousafzai, born in the Swat Valley, Pakistan, the young woman shot by the Taliban for going to school, being made the youngest ever U.N. Messenger of Peace.
  • Amnesty International report that global executions have fallen 37% since 2015, with the USA being removed from the top 5 for the first time since 2006.
  • The coastguard of Italy and their rescue of more than 300 migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea on flimsy rubber boats.
  • A restaurant in Tripoli, Lebanon offering free meals to the poor and needy, feeding 185 to 200 daily.
  • The discovery of a 14,000-year-old Ice Age village on Triquet Island, British Columbia, Canada, with carbon dating placing it older than the pyramids in Egypt.
  • Pope Francis rallying many Roman Catholic cardinals, bishops, and priests to oppose immigration crackdowns throughout the world; and his planned visit to Egypt to meet with the Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II.

Amid the glowing light of truth and new life, the reality of grace and hope for our world, we give thanks, not as we ought but as we are able, opening our hearts and hands, our minds and wills to your leading, Holy One, living in the assurance that in you there is indeed Resurrection and New Life, and so we sing with hearts and voices:

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Let it be so. Amen and amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, March 9, 2017

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

                                                                                            Genesis 12:1-3, NRSV

Lord, just as you called Abram from his country, so you call us out of our places of comfort and into the places where we can be a blessing.  And yet we cling to what is familiar: our own countries, our own kindred, and our own homes.  We are afraid to follow your call into the unknown, even though you have promised to bless us.  We fail to put our trust in you, in your vision for our future, and in the land that you will show us.  You call us to place our trust in you, and to follow where you lead.  Give us courage, O God,

So that in us all the families of the earth might be blessed.

Fear and ignorance continue to spread as world leaders turn their focus inward.  The federal government in the US is preparing to implement a new executive order banning refugees and citizens of six majority-Muslim countries from entering the country.  Tension between officials in North Korea and Malaysia are building in the wake of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam.  Young people in Egypt responded with dismay as former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was acquitted of complicity in the deaths of 800 protestors in 2011. You call us to step out of our own concerns, and to hold our leaders accountable for their impact on our world.  Give us wisdom, O God,

So that in us all the families of the earth might be blessed.

Millions of vulnerable people around the world continue to suffer due to natural disasters and climate instability.  Torrential rains have caused the Limpopo River to burst its banks, resulting in floods and loss of crops in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.  Cyclone Enawo has left at least three dead and over 500 homeless in Madagascar.  In Brazil, dozens of homes have been destroyed in a fire. In Somalia over 110 people died within forty-eight hours due severe drought conditions. With over 100,000 people facing starvation in South Sudan, the United Nations has declared a famine in the region.  You call us to step out of our own concerns, and to use our resources to bring relief and aid to your beloved children.  Give us compassion, O God,

 So that in us all the families of the earth might be blessed.

Our news is filled with daily examples of hate, retribution, and senseless violence.  In France, a family of four was murdered over an inheritance argument.  A series of fatal shootings of individuals of Indian descent in South Carolina, US, points to an epidemic of racial hatred.  In the largest military hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan more than thirty people were killed and dozens injured by Islamic State gunmen dressed as medics. Even as we celebrate International Women’s Day this week, police in Australia, have just rescued a woman who had been sexually and physically abused over the course of a two-month period, and statistics show that 70% of women around the world will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes.  You call us to step out of our own concerns, and to treat all people with humanity and respect.  Give us love, O God,

So that in us all the families of the earth might be blessed. 

 You call us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to advocate and fight for safety and security for all of your children around the world, O God.  Give us courage.  Give us wisdom.  Give us compassion.  Give us love.  Empower us to be your hands and feet in the world, so that in us all the families of the earth might be blessed.

 Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, December 15, 2016

We have come to worship you, Shepherd of Israel.  Out of the busy-ness we create for ourselves at this season, we come to remember why.   We give thanks for the bravery of Mary, for the courage of Joseph,  and we ask that these qualities support us in the face of overwhelming commercialization and the rewriting of the good news.

This week, as we think of Mary, we pray for all preparing to give birth, for their midwives, doctors and all who provide equipment, medicines and other support.  We give thanks for the California, USA company, We Care Solar, which, realizing the difficulties of providing midwifery and other medical care when electric light is not reliable, invented “solar suitcases”.

As we think of Joseph, we pray for fathers facing the need to become refugees to keep their children safe – those who are too small, too old, too frail, yet in fear for their lives must run.  With the news that any ceasefire in Aleppo, Syria, has been violated and praying for those who are frustrated in their attempts to give shelter and aid, we must cry out for these your children, Shepherd God.

We pray for the people of Yemen, as the humanitarian crisis deepens; and for the people of Palmyra as so-called ISIS retakes the city.  Because the media is silent we must cry out for these your children, Shepherd God.

As the western side of the Pacific ring of fire seems to be particularly active, we think of those whose lives continue to be affected – in Aceh province, Indonesia; in the Solomon Islands; in New Zealand and Japan.   While we give thanks that scientists note the changing coastlines which may give clues to earthquake predictions, because the media is silent we must cry out for these your children, Shepherd God.

We pray for Christians in Nigeria and Egypt following attacks on churches and cathedrals.  For all who are attacked for their faith, because the media is silent we must cry out for these your children, Shepherd God.

We pray for those recently married, who in their love radiate the good news that  in love there is room for all in this world.   We praise you, Shepherd of Israel.   Amen