World in Prayer

World News This Week in Prayer – November 27th 2014

“Praise and thanksgiving, Father we offer, for all things living you have made good”

Hymn by Albert F.Bayly

Father at the start of a new Christian year we offer our thanksgiving for all the mercies we have received over the past years.

Despite the snow and difficult traveling conditions for many in Canada and the USA, we offer you our praise and thanksgiving that we celebrate with our families and friends.

Because of our increased awareness of the use of rape as a weapon of war, we offer our thanks and praise for the work of doctors such as Denis Mukwege, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, honored by the European Union with the Sakharov Prize For Freedom of Thought, for his work with victims of sexual assault.

Despite ebola still being out of control in Guinea, West Africa, we give our praise and thanksgiving for the news that a vaccine is “promising” and may soon be in use.

Because of the devastating death of cricketer Philip Hughes in Sidney, Australia, we realize that we take for granted the pleasure we give and receive from sports and games and offer our praise and thanksgiving.

Despite the reports of 37 deaths in two separate Chinese coal mines following explosions, we give our thanks and praise that increasingly non-fossil fuels such as bottle lights are used more widely in Bangladesh.

Because we need to know how best to live at one with our world we give our thanks and praise that inner and outer space are increasingly explored with the news that links in the brain affecting Alzheimer’s are being revealed and an exploratory lander, Philae, now rests on a comet.

Despite the news that the Giant St Helena Earwig, found only on the one small island in the Atlantic Ocean, has been declared extinct we give praise and thanksgiving for the reassessment of museum and library collections, confirming a horned dinosaur in Canada and Utah, USA and revealing a first folio Shakespeare in France.   We confess our complicity in changing our world.  May we have the grace to save, conserve and celebrate all that is now living so that future generations are able to celebrate and offer thanksgiving in a fully functioning ecosystem.

Father, there is so much we do not know or understand about ourselves and our world.  We are like children opening our presents and finding the wrapping is as interesting as the contents.  We offer our praise and thanksgiving for the gifts of curiosity and imagination.

Take us into Advent and a new year with all our wonder, delight, and creativity intact, as we offer praise and thanksgiving.

Give us thankful and grateful hearts, Lord we pray.  Amen.

World News This Week In Prayer – Thursday, June 19, 2014

Dearest One,

How can I ask forgiveness for letting a person die?
How can we ask forgiveness not just for ourselves, but for the whole world?  Not just for this moment in time, but for all of human history, for all lives to come?

Four sleeping homeless people were run over – apparently deliberately – by a truck in New Mexico, United States.  One died – a woman who liked to read, her friends said; the “guys” in the truck have not been caught.  In Paris, France, a lynch mob attacked a teenage Roma (Gypsy) boy, leaving him badly injured.

How can we, who were not in either of those places, ask forgiveness?  Dear God, what have we done, or left undone, that let this happen?

Last week, for the first time in human history, a global summit was held on ending sexual violence in conflict.  (In fact, it’s only been since World War II, that the international community generally accepted the concept of crimes of war.)

How can we ask forgiveness for the thousands of years, and regimes, and places where the horrors of war were taken for granted as part of the very nature of war?  How can we ask forgiveness for those who still glorify rape, pillage, murder, and terrorizing of non-combatants and children?  How can we ask – nay, plead – for those who have been raped to be given the grace of self-forgiveness?

The United Nations is appealing for more than $1 billion to aid South Sudan,  warning that tens of thousands of children affected by the past six months of civil war could die this year without this assistance.  In Myanmar, a senior U.N. official says she witnessed a level of human suffering she had never seen before in camps for some 140,000 stateless Muslim Rohingya. At least 50,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon are working, often in dire conditions and for 12 hours a day, to pay for food and shelter for their families. In Kenya, child labor and trafficking keep millions out of school.

God, how can we bear the burden of knowing this is going on, and of being powerless to stop it?  How can we look at our own children – and ask forgiveness that there are so many little ones who are not free to embrace learning and growing in health and safety and joy?

Iraq appears to be descending into civil war.  Afghanistan is increasingly unstable.  The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda have both sent extra troops to their shared border after gunfire broke out, ending months of relative calm.  Hundreds of Pakistani families have fled from a surge of fighting between Pakistani government forces and militants into neighboring Afghanistan.

How can we ask forgiveness for not stepping in to end these conflicts?  How can we ask forgiveness for the damage done, when we do?  God, how can we ask forgiveness when we are still uncertain about what is right?

Dearest God, sometimes following you can be so unsettling, when all we want is peace.
Thank you…for consciences that make us ask questions like these.
Thank you…for allowing us to be uncomfortable, when there are no easy answers.
Thank you…for making us in your own image, longing to take every hurting person under our wings.

Thank you…just for being God.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, May 29, 2014

Go up to Gilead and take balm. — Jeremiah 46:11

“There is a Balm in Gilead” – American Spiritual

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

Some times 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.

If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say He died for all.

He won’t quit or give up until he brings justice everywhere on earth, and people in foreign nations long for his teaching.

I am the Lord God. I created the heavens like an open tent above. I made the earth and everything that grows on it. I am the source of life for all who live on this earth, so listen to what I say. I chose you to bring justice, and I am here at your side.  I selected and sent you to bring light and my promise of hope to the nations.
Isaiah 42:4-6   Contemporary English Version (CEV)

 Sometimes I feel discouraged hearing or reading the news…

  • The completely dishonorable “honor killing” of Farzana Parveen and her unborn baby outside Lahore High Court, Pakistan observed by police who took no action.
  • The 219 Nigerian school girls still held captive by Boko Haram terrorists.  We give thanks that it is claimed another 57 girls have managed to escape their captivity.
  • The election of right wing racists in France to the European Parliament, and increasing loss of confidence in mainstream parties in several other European countries, including the UK
  • Yet another multiple slaying by a troubled young man in California, USA

God of Love, remove our blinkered vision, unblock our plugged up ears, and melt our stony hearts so we will love as You love us.

  •  the continuing violence in so many countries including the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Mexico…
  • the women and girls marginalised and oppressed merely because of their gender even suffering death
  • the overlooked in our society – the homeless, those seeking but unable to find work, those without meaning in their life, those ill in body, mind or spirit and the often very limited resources available to those seeking to help alleviate these “unsexy” issues… As though value relies on perceived “sexiness”…

God of Love, remove our blinkered vision, unblock our plugged up ears, and melt our stony hearts so we will love as You love us.

Give us the courage to face our fears which so often cause us to have knee-jerk reactions to defend what is often indefensible:

  • fear of someone next to us with a different language, culture and perhaps skin color
  • fear of loneliness, weakness and vulnerability and most especially that which we dare not mention – death
  • fear of economic meltdown, violence, difference in so many forms which often makes us aggressive and uncaring of others as we protect ourselves and those whom we know and love

Remind us again and again, Lord, and bring us up short when we want to ignore these difficulties that this is part of our need for wholeness.  We cannot be whole if any are excluded, or marginalized or oppressed or suffering injustice.  You call us to wholeness in You.

God of Love, you came for each and every person to whom You have given life.  Take us up into the mystery of your redemptive will, so that aggression, anger and fear can be dissolved in the incomprehensible transforming action of agape-love.  Bring to birth reconciliation and peace, where currently there is intransigence and hatred. Remind us through Your Holy Spirit that You died and rose again for all. No exclusions! No-one is a nobody in Your eyes. So, how can we dare to think otherwise?

In Jesus Name, we pray.  AMEN.

World News This Week In Prayer – Thursday, January 9, 2014

And, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. –Matthew 2:9-11

O Lord, around the world we celebrate the arrival of wise men to Bethlehem, according to our own traditions. Whether this is with gifts for children, practical jokes, days off for women, cakes, or feasts, we rejoice with exceeding great joy for the birth of Jesus Christ.

We pray you to bestow wisdom upon:

  • Afghanistan, where President Karzai has decided to release 72 prisoners considered by the United States to be Taliban.
  • Chile, where the government has declared a health alert in four regions due to the air quality formed by 70 separate forest fires.
  • Colombia, where new regulations aimed at preventing coal export spillage and pollution will cost the government substantial royalty sums but will protect the environment.
  • France, where the top court has banned a show by a controversial comic who has seven convictions for anti-Semitic hate speech.
  • Iraq, where human rights activists have condemned abuses against civilians by both government troops and insurgents in the Anbar province.
  • Japan, where an explosion in a Mitsubishi factory killed at least five people and injured at least 12.
  • Pakistan, where a 15-year-old boy was killed when he tackled a man wearing a suicide vest standing outside of his school, saving the school building; 2,000 students; and the school employees.
  • Russia, where police search for suspected Islamist militants who killed five people in a city located 300 kilometers from the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to begin in less than one month.
  • Sudan, where the army advances against rebel forces who have used machine guns against civilians, torched entire villages, and looted crops, leaving at least 1,000 people dead and more than 200,000 people displaced in the past month.

We rejoice with exceeding great joy:

  • that the record cold temperatures that froze nearly all of the United States have improved.
  • that Japan‘s Prime Minister Abe is expected to pledge more than $14 billion in aid and trade deals to Africa during his visit there this week.
  • that Germany has joined international efforts to destroy Syria‘s stockpile of chemical weapons.

We ask for your blessings upon all persons in a state of transition as we begin a new year and a new season:

  • those who are without a home
  • those who are between jobs
  • those who recover from an illness or from surgery
  • those who welcome home a newborn or adopted child
  • those who are unable to conceive
  • those returning from war
  • those returning to war
  • those who are divorcing
  • those who mourn.

May this season of Epiphany bring much laughter and light to our own communities and to the whole world. Amen.