India

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 in Prayer – August 6, 2020

Dear Lord, help us to hear these voices.

I pray today that my knees and back hold up. I pray that my mom and children are ok in our two-bedroom apartment while I work at a hotel and clean 15 rooms each day. I pray that my paycheck will be enough, that my car holds up, that someone cares about me enough to say “hello” to give a smile.

There are approximately 926,960 maids and housekeeping cleaners in the U.S. Sometimes cleaners are assigned 30 rooms in a day.

Across the barrier of our indifference awaken us to the other, help us to understand the burdens they carry, oh Christ, by your grace. May we understand the equity built into a living wage, the costs of health care and child care, housing and food, transportation, and school supplies.

I was a child soldier in Liberia, but first I was a schoolboy. I still pray for my grandparents. The soldiers arrived and took me away. I was taught to fight. Smoking drugs would energize us. The war is over, long over and many of us are trying to get off of drugs. I pray that I can leave this sad life. What price must I pay for my country’s war. I pray that I am not abandoned and shunned. I pray that God will protect me and hear my voice.

The UN investigates and reports on child soldiers. The top-ranking countries are Afghanistan, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. Children as young as eight are used as combatants, guards, human shields, porters, messengers, spies, cooks, and/or for sexual purposes. Girl soldiers are often used as “wives” and sexually abused by their commanders and other soldiers. Iraq’s Kurdish and Yezidi children were recruited. Myanmar children are forcibly recruited into the National Army. In Nigeria girls, ages 7 and 8 were used as suicide bombers. In Somalia over 900 children were recruited and posted at checkpoints. Two factions in South Sudan have taken over 17,000 children. In Syria, warring sides have recruited children as young as seven, half are under age 15. They have been exploited in propaganda videos. In Yemen, where we pray that those suffering from starvation will be cared for, boys are recruited to fight on all sides.

Across the world where these horrendous injustices continue against the most vulnerable, their childhood swept away, torn from their families, oh Christ by your grace we call out against war and these atrocities. Help us to take right action. Help us to speak out against militarization. We pray for those suffering and the loss to their families.

Will my land flood and be silted over taking away our livelihood? I feel there is nothing to do but wait and watch. I pray we will be safe and not lose everything. The wind is picking up and the rain has already been falling.

River flooding in population-dense countries includes India, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, and Cambodia.

Oh, Christ in your mercy, protect these countries from what seems to be inevitable flooding and a cycle of loss and destitution. We pray for those in harm’s way around the world. Give us the ability to work together to share resources and contribute knowledge to reduce this suffering. Be with the emergency transport, the health care workers, the utility crews, the engineers, and their teams as they design and plan and understand the rivers that bring life and death.

We are the over 1,700 health care workers who have died of COVID 19. We did our work, loved our work, trained many years, endured long hours, cried and spoke out and then we too became sick. We were not indifferent or complacent. We pray this pandemic will end that the billions of people under this veil of suffering will find comfort that leaders will come together in reason and generosity of heart and mind.

Medscape publishes the names of workers around the world. We name these few in remembrance of so many. Onyenachi Obasi, 51 Nurse, National Health Service, Barking and Dagenham, London, England. Morteza Vojdan, age unknown, General Practitioner, Mashhad, Iran. Patricia Wilke, 63, Pharmacist, Winslow, Arizona. Valeriu Pripa, 59, Head of Radiological Imaging Department, Chisinau, Moldova. Rosalinda “Rose” Pulido, 46, Oncologist, San Juan de Dios Hospital, Pasay City Philippines. Freddy Pow Hing, 59, Interventional Cardiologist, Hospital IESS Duran, Duran, Ecuador. Anonymous, 62, Organ Transplantation, Wuhan, China. Oh Christ, in your compassion and mercy give us the will to endure, care, and remember.

We’re still in shock; we’re still refusing to believe that something happened. We still think it’s like a dream or something. It was terrifying. It was horrible.

Residents of Beruit, Lebanon are reeling after an explosion of ammonium nitrate leveled the port injuring at least 50,00 people and leaving at least 137 dead. Residents have been working together to clear the rubble and investigations seeking to determine responsibility are underway as residents grieve and begin to rebuild from the devastation.

I am a tree, a forest, a bird, a butterfly, a bumblebee and a bat I have no human voice, my habitat is shrinking and yet I cling to beautiful nature. Hear my song, the wind moving in the fir, the singing wetland, the happy buzz and light wings. Receive our offerings.

Oh Lord, we have trespassed on our own earth, we have stolen and killed, sprayed and paved over, and cut down without thought to 7 generations. Forgive us. Approximately 30,000 species per year — about three per hour — are being driven to extinction. Where is our mindfulness? Nearly 80 percent of species diversity of our world is destroyed because of habitat loss — approximately 5,760 acres per day or 240 acres per hour. Christ in your mercy awaken us to our stewardship. Help us to live and step lightly.

Oh Lord, call us to your table of life. Remind us of the mighty work we need to do to care for each and all. Rest us at night and renew us for this day that is before us.

Amen.

World News in Prayer – Thursday, 30th July 2020

I never anticipated that now, in the midst of an abundant summer following a beautiful spring, we would still be living out a winter spirituality. But the Covid-19 Pandemic has brought this upon us.

But…We’re All in This Together, Right?….except….

Lowering of pollution that first month—the air so crisp and clear and breathable. Everything stood out in beautiful colors.

The pandemic has starkly revealed the economic, racial and social inequalities of the status quo in so many countries of both hemispheres which makes for poor physical and mental health in all sections of the population, an increase in injustice and unstable communities. We remember the people of Portland, Oregon, USA and other cities where political machismo is rampaging over elected officials and the populace; for the democracy candidates in Hong Kong being imprisoned and denied their right to stand; for activists in so many countries standing up against corruption and violence, losing their lives and disappearing without trace: be close to those in China, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Russia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Lord, you are the God of justice and truth: lead us from darkness to light

We have seen that people of color and the poor have borne the brunt of the crisis: much higher rates of virus infection and morbidity as well as greater economic devastation. Help all those researching in the UK, the USA, India and elsewhere for the reasons for this. May we all embrace the proven results and change what is wrong and protect our brothers and sisters of all colors and creeds.

Lord you created us all in your image. Open our eyes to see the beauty in the diversity you have created and celebrate our differences as well as similarities. Together we make up a beautiful image reflecting You.

The Pandemic has laid bare the gross social inequities in our nations and the many things we have taken for granted which have failed us.

Help us to embrace that the new “now~” has to be different from the old “normal” if we want our children to have a future on this wonderful blue marble we call home, Earth.

Sojourners Magazine calls this Kairos time—”a propitious moment for decision or action.” Certainly we have seen an alarming escalation of hate crimes (especially targeting Asians) in many countries whether the predominant population is white or of color. We name for healing our own countries… but also South Africa, Russia, China, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Hungary.

We give thanks for the generosity and welcome of individuals daring to stand out from the crowd to share your Love and welcoming heart to those fleeing violence, war and starvation. Thankfully we have also seen a broad shift in attitudes and perceptions around the nations. Mercifully and providing a source of hope, the new generation is choosing not to tolerate what has been accepted for too long by too many people. This is very encouraging, but I must remind myself of the shortness of attention spans and the limits of bureaucratic imagination. Will our changing cultural consciousness have a real effect on laws, policies or practices of our flawed social structures?

The bottom line is: We cannot go back to “normal” because “normal” is what got us here.

A statement from URI (United Religions Initiative USA) regarding this moment of choice sums it up for us:

“We choose love.
We choose compassion.
We choose non-violence.
We choose equality.
And we choose to dedicate our lives to creating cultures of peace, justice and healing.”

We choose to follow you, Jesus, Prince of Peace. Send your Holy Spirit to fill us with hearts brimming over with love for one another and the planet and all its component plants, resources and creatures which you have created for each one of us to enjoy and have our needs not our wants met.

‘God of grace, you invite the despised,
you touch the unclean,
you lift the head
of those who are brought low:
give us that hope against all hope
for a world transformed
by your healing touch;
through Jesus Christ,
the mercy of God. Amen. ‘

(Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church)

(Inspired by and adapted from
The Canticle, July 2020, Voice of the Community of St Francis, Province of the Americas)

World News This Week in Prayer- Thursday, July 23, 2020

Ever-creating God, Your glory fills the skies, from the transient sparkle of the fleeting meteor to the unexpected spectacle of Comet Neowise; your glory fills the earth from mountain height to ocean depth. We praise you.

As difficult as it is to find words to express how much your glory thrills and excites us it is even more difficult to turn and face the problems of humanity.

We pray for the war-torn, hungry and pandemic hit country of Yemen; we can barely remember how this situation came about and cannot understand how it is allowed to continue.

We pray for East Africa countries into the Horn of Africa and India and Pakistan as huge locust swarms move across the land. May our desire to act against their destructive force be planned sensibly, taking into account the needs of other wildlife so that the regions’ bio-diversity can be maintained.

We pray for the areas affected by earthquake this week, notably the Aleutians East Borough, Alaska, United States, with the possibilities of tsunami and repeated aftershocks. We pray for the countries of Bangladesh, Nepal and eastern states of India hit by the worst monsoon flooding for many years. Reports that rare one-horned rhinos have drowned seem to news agencies worse than the many human deaths.

So many disasters, Lord, when our instinct to rush to aid those affected are impeded by multi-national lockdowns and closed borders. As Australia, Hong Kong and China re-impose restrictions of movement, we give thanks that research for treatments and vaccines progresses.

Life continues, and for those who have planned new jobs, or moving homes, we pray it goes smoothly. For those forced into unplanned life changes by war, politically-caused famine, and environmental disasters, we pray they may find safe, secure refuges of warmth, shelter, food, and drink. We pray for all known to us suddenly overtaken by an unwanted trauma.

And finally, we pray for ourselves. As we self-isolate, mourn, or rejoice and party, Lord, you know our lives and we place them in your safe and secure hands knowing that our names are engraved upon your palms. (Is 49:16) Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, July 16, 2020

This week’s prayer contains excerpts from The [Episcopal] Book of Common Prayer.

Lord God, today we gather in Your name, though most of us not in the indoor spaces that have come to symbolize gathering spaces for those seeking truth, justice, and faith. Many of us struggle to feel the sacred or even simple connection through a computer screen. And yet, here we are, gathering and struggling and trying to find holiness. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct those who speak where many listen and write what many read, that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise, its mind sound, and its will righteous. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

O Lord, we pray for the countries where COVID-19 cases are increasing, notably the United States, India, Mexico, South Africa, Colombia, Argentina, Iraq, Indonesia, and Oman. (Click on the link above, then scroll down below the map to see the statistics for each country, and, if you wish, to pray by name for every country currently being affected by the virus.) Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

Mother God, we come to you full of grief. We find ourselves going through the stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—many times each day. Grant us the grace and space to grieve for our own losses, and the grace and space to allow others to grieve theirs: the displacement of children from their schools and playgrounds today and the displacement of Black children for generations, the isolation of the elderly today and of the marginalized throughout history, the power of protest or silence. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

Lord Jesus, when you came among us, you proclaimed the kingdom of God in villages, towns, and lonely places. Have mercy upon all who live and work in rural areas. May their far-flung health care providers receive the training and resources they need to save lives. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

O God, behold and visit the cities of the earth. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate racism and violence so that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

God our Father, whose Son had nowhere to lay his head: Grant that those who live alone may not be lonely in their solitude, but that, following in Jesus’ steps, they may find fulfillment in loving you. Even though so many of us around the world right now are never alone, we feel lonely. We miss communing, and we also miss conversations with strangers. We have sacrificed anniversaries and graduations and weddings and birthdays and birth plans in order to keep our communities safe. Give grace to your servants, O Lord.

We pray for our religious leaders and essential workers.
We pray for ourselves as we grapple with the lies of omission from our history lessons.
We pray for health care workers and death care industry personnel.
We pray for the unemployed.
We pray that scientists not be at war with politicians.

Give grace to your servants, O Lord. Help us to grieve so that we may heal. Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, 25 June 2020

(Many thanks to Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor/author, Nadia Bolz-Weber, for some of the prayer petitions.)

God who is called by many names, God of this earth and all its peoples, today we are crying out, how long, O Lord?

How long until we can touch our parents and beloved elders? (even as we thank you for each day we have with them.)

How long until we can have things on our calendar to look forward to that don’t involve staring at a computer? (even as we thank you for the abundance of celebrations and movies and live music and meals with friends that we have been granted up until a few months ago….even as we thank you for the gift which electronics can be to us.)

How long until we can gather together again to sing your praise? (even as we thank you for calling an assembly in the streets to overturn the tables of injustice and racism.)

How long until the dying ceases, the brutality ends, the anxiety abates?

How long until justice rains down like waters?

How long, O Lord?

How long until the coronavirus pandemic stops holding our lives and our world in the thrall of fear? (even as we are aware of the increasing numbers of both cases and deaths in Brazil, Mexico, India, Pakistan, and the United States.)

How long for the recovery of the people in six states in southern Mexico, hit by an earthquake this week, killing six people, and destroying many buildings? (even as we are grateful that the government’s alert system worked well, saving many more lives.)

How long until our LGBTQIA siblings in sub-Saharan Africa are free from criminal prosecution for their same-sex loving relationships? (even as the members of the lower house of parliament in Gabon have voted for decriminalization, a significant first step.)

How long until people dealing with cancer in Zimbabwe can get proper treatment, as the health care system has been compromised by the corruption of the health minister? (even as health care workers are making every effort to assist the sick and suffering.)

How long until the massive plume of dust from the Sahara Desert reaches the southeastern United States, bringing with it the possibility of multiple respiratory problems and straining an already-stressed health care system? (even as awareness is raised through technology and the efforts of the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

How long until the wildfires in Arizona, United States, which have forced the evacuation of many residents, are brought under control? (even as we give thanks for the firefighters and first responders working there.)

How Long, O Lord?

We’re not asking for a date. We’re asking for the faith that a date will come.

Amen.

World News in Prayer – Thursday, 18 June, 2020

What does the Lord ask of us? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.~ Micah 6 : 8

“My thoughts are not like your thoughts. And your ways are not like my ways,” announces the Lord. “The heavens are higher than the earth. And my ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” ~ Isaiah 55 : 8 – 9

Brokenness and loss of trust in leaders- political, business, media, health, education and sadly, so often, the police- is tearing us apart. When trust is broken and discrimination and injustice becomes appallingly ‘commonplace’, when daily survival is precarious, then fear and division flourish.

Jesus, Light of the World, pierce the darkness of our world and of our understanding.

For many there is the added trauma of grieving, not only the loss of loved ones while separated by ‘social distancing’, but having that loss compounded by bigotry, racism and injustice. Pain, frustration and anger become overwhelming. Words are clumsy tools at times like this, but let us meet the Christ within – in the still center in each of us where you tell us that the kingdom of God already is…

Jesus, Light of the World, come in your loving compassion; pierce the darkness of our world and of our understanding.

We celebrate and give thanks for those people – often of color and of many ethnicities- who confront this evil with strength, offering the transformative way through a firm, unswerving stand for justice, truth, love and mercy. They remind us that we are all one family created from God’s loving heart, and while giving us free will, longs for us to choose to return and follow the Divine way, not our way.

We remember with thanksgiving Patrick Hutchinson, a black personal trainer in London, UK who, with friends forming a barrier, rescued an English Defense League white protestor from possible death after being abandoned by his EDL colleagues in a counter-protest to Black Lives Matter. We remember the leaders of the Diné people (Navajo) in the USA, providing interventions and raising the profile of so many First Nation and Indigenous peoples suffering not only disproportionately during the Covid-19 pandemic but from systemic marginalization and injustice including arrest and deaths in custody. This is a worldwide evil also present in the nations of Australia, Zimbabwe, Chechnya and Amazonia in South America. We give thanks for the wise leadership offered this week by the Dalai Lama in exile and lockdown in India where Covid-19 is prevalent.

Jesus, Light of the World, heal our selfishness and help us reset our values to where each one of us truly looks out for one other as one human family under God.

Help us to dare to travel the road to a new way of living in your Light and and be open to the promptings of your Holy Spirit.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me;

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Spirit of the Living God, move among us all;

Make us one in heart and mind, make us one in love.

Humble, caring, selfless, sharing –

Spirit of the living God, move among us all.

Daniel Iverson

Hear us, loving, living God, as we pray from the depths of our broken hearts. Amen and amen

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, 11 June 2020

Christ, Jesus our friend and companion in the streets, in police stations, on curbsides, at take out restaurants, in hospital waiting rooms, in public health offices that are conducting contact tracing phone calls, in hallways of governments, and with those who listen to testimony. You, Lord, who wait for us to open the door, to admit our faults and to forgive. Give us courage to do the hard acts, to love mightily and give tenderly.

Holy Spirit – comfort us. Soften our touch, blend our voices, clarify our minds and fire up our hearts for the work at hand.

Oh Lord, we ask for your guidance in action, word and thought.

Great One, who breathed life into clay, who continues to mold us in your many-colored image, open our hearts wide, crack them open, get our juices flowing for justice and mercy.

Holy Mystery, you carry us when we are sorrowful, broken down in deepest grief and unable to go further. Give us rest. Give us a peace that is beyond our ability to find alone.

Our Higher Power, you have shaken the foundations of what we thought to be order, you have removed the blindfolds to our unjust acts and collusion. You have upended our sense of control and turned over our tables of normalcy. Help us to seek your will and turn to your light, to seek your word.

We attend to words in the news of “police reform,” “migrant worker,” “essential workers,” “health equity,” “social distancing,” “multisystem inflammatory syndrome,” “data control,” “roiled,” “tossed out,” “I can’t breathe,” “sir,” “spiritual bypassing,” “voting,” “voter suppression,” “caught on film.”

Let us not forget words like “hunger,” “poverty,” “deserted,” “overrun,” “surge of cases,” “marginalized.”

We pray for Brazil and its respected public health care system and epidemiologic surveillance that has pushed back against the president and ministers who sought to suppress and minimize the data on deaths and cases due to COVID-19. We pray for the people of Manus, where the virus has circulated deep into the Amazon raising a monthly death toll to three times the average. We pray for those protesting for better health care in Paraisopolis favela in São Paulo.

We pray for a family of the Qom Indigenous Peoples who suffered at the hands of 15 police officers in Fontana, Argentina during an illegal raid. We pray that the demands for administrative and judicial investigation are swift and thorough and that the detained and beaten family members receive the care they need. We pray for the ending of institutional racism here and in all places.

Strengthen your people in Ghana as borders are closed and streets emptied. Give courage to the health care staff of Dzake Health Clinic and Peki Hospital as they prepare for COVID-19 with minimal PPE and a focus on prevention with hand-washing and visitor limitation. Help us to lean out new windows to hear sounds in other communities.

We pray for the human rights of the citizens of Hong Kong, China and the furtherance of common law principles and all types of freedoms including freedom of expression, publication, information, assembly, religion, association, that they will endure under the “one country, two systems principle.”

Continue to empower the Indian Samaritan’s work in New Delhi, India, as educators delivered coupons to the neediest families. On distribution days the coupon is exchanged for a Kit which includes 5 kg of rice, 5 kg of wheat flour, 1 liter of oil, 1 kg of sugar, 250 grams of tea, 100 grams of chili powder, 100 grams of coriander powder, 100 grams of turmeric, 1 kg of lentils, 3 bars of bathing soap, 3 bars of detergent soap, and 1 bottle of hand sanitizer. These gifts might seem hopelessly small in the face of a growing pandemic where hospitals have to turn away patients due to lack of space, but we trust that you, in your mercy, will amplify this Kit, these your loaves and fishes nourishing community.

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 This Week in Prayer- Thursday, May 21, 2020

Even as the world turns, it seems the world has stood still in the shock of the pandemic. But we know this is not truly so, even as we know that you, Lord, hold all in your hand and love what you have created.

Science tells us that hurricanes and cyclones will continue to get more powerful – this week we are told that the ozone friendly chemicals we turned to thinking they would protect our atmosphere are themselves harmful. Lord, help us get our responses right.

As Cyclone Amphan makes landfall (Wednesday afternoon) on the Sundabans off Bangladesh / India with an expectation that it will track across Bangladesh and India as far as Bhutan. In this supercyclone, the first in the Bay of Bengal for 20 years, people are already dying. Lord help us to remember that science is not always the answer, but only provides a way for us to begin to understand the world you have made.

With shock, we pray for the residents who have been evacuated in the state of Michigan in the United States where dams have collapsed following days of heavy rain. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency for areas near the Tittabawassee River after the Edenville and Sanford dams burst.

Even as heavy rain lashes these areas, so drought builds across parts of Europe and wildfires burn in Arizona, Florida, Britain. Lord, help us get our responses right.

Lord, hear the cries of those in regions we don’t often hear about. Local officials in Russia’s Dagestan region have described the situation there as a “catastrophe”, with reports of a rising death toll and serious shortages of equipment. Officially the region has recorded 36 deaths from the Coronavirus with more than 3,600 cases but health officials say hundreds more have died of pneumonia, including 40 medics.

We pray for the migrant workers of India, faced with walking many hundreds of miles home and dying of exhaustion on the way. Without their labor, modern India would not be built. Lord, the worker is worthy of his hire ; you hear and know the cries of the desperate. Lord, help us get our responses right.

We pray for those whose Government’s response to the Covid 19 crisis is less than compassionate; for the people of Brazil who are faced with “fake news – this is only a mild flu”; for the people of Britain and the U.S. whose governments had dismantled pandemic procedures previously in place; for the residents of Sweden’s care homes who are not being hospitalized when taken ill.

There is good news; we give thanks. On the remote Australian island, the Norfolk Island morepork owl, with an estimated population of only 45-50, has had two owl chicks survive to fledgling, the first to do so in more than a decade. White storks have hatched for the first time in over 6 centuries in England while, on world bee day, Monmouth in Wales has officially become the first ever “Bee Town”

We hear that scientists in Australia may have found a way to prevent coral bleaching – a killing event caused, in part, by ocean warming

Following the maternity ward attack on the Dasht-e-Barchi hospital in the Afghan capital Kabul, killing at least 24 people, including newborns, mothers and nurses, we give thanks for the nursing mothers who have visited the hospital to feed the orphan babies. Lord, help us get our responses right.

Lord of all and every situation we place all this, our environment, our selves in your hand, may we respond to you in love so that our responses are loving and right for your world. Let it be so. Amen

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