World in Prayer

World News This Week in Prayer — Thursday, March 23, 2017

Jeremiah 17:8  New International Version (NIV)

They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

Our prayers come before you to implore for the patient work of strengthening our connection to you. Of the life-saving, life-building water you offer us; that we will be both steadfast and resourceful in facing the challenges before us.

The United Nations and many others warn us that climate change has moved us into unknown ranges, give us, we pray, the things we need:

Compassion for those who are disrupted and displaced,

Wisdom to assess danger,

Persistence to ameliorate.

Where the scourge of hunger destroys hope and decency:

In South Sudan where 270,000 children are suffering from severe malnutrition and 4.9 million souls are severely food insecure.

In Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia with more than 14 million people are food insecure.

In Syria, where 9.4 million people are in need of food assistance.

In North Korea, where hidden economic hardships and famine endure.

In far too much of childhood in far too many places.

Give us, we pray, generosity, in funds where that is possible and in spirit that is always possible. Where greener approaches to energy, in particular in sustainable forestry practices and ‘green charcoal’ for your world where a third of your children depend on fuel wood daily, give us, we pray, hearts open to the misery of hunger, minds open to the rigors of analysis, and muscular spirits fortified by that vision you have shared with us.

Nowruz is a holiday for the first day of spring, celebrated for more than 3,000 years in the Balkans, the Black Sea Basin, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and other regions and now included for all of us in the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Bakers make a special cookie on that occasion.

Feed us, we pray, with that cookie in the place the poet Rumi described as, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,” there, where the strong trees are built from drops of holy water.  Amen

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016

Pray without ceasing…Becoming more infused with the nature and Spirit of God as we pray… Taking on the attributes of God as we become one with him beyond our earthly limits of time and space…

Lord as Jacob (Israel) struggled and demanded a blessing from his opponent at Peniel, may we persist and demand your gifts for all who suffer including ourselves. With broken hearts we uphold the terrified, traumatized children and people of Aleppo, Syria being bombed, starved, and deprived of food, medicine, and safety. We pray that our political leaders will find the backbone and determination to confront and stop the inhumanity of this internecine civil war.

Prince of Peace, let your peace vanquish the evil let loose in your world on your people.

Violence takes so many forms, whether trolling online, sexual harassment daily of women in Morocco; in fact, throughout your world even in schools in the UK and USA; the denigration of anyone who is different from what the abusers claim is ‘normal,’ when even a US Presidential candidate could boast of sexual assault on women. We pray for those too who are threatened and even killed because of their sexual orientation.

Loving God, your merciful love is wider and deeper than we can ever imagine. Free us to be channels of that love where we are.

We pray for the millions of silent marchers in Maharashtra, India over the past 6-weeks highlighting the need for equality of opportunity and an end to cronyism and corruption depriving the Dalits and Tribal people of justice and freedom.

We give thanks for the $5 a month health scheme in Kenya offering the chance of medical treatment formerly beyond most Kenyans.

We give thanks for those working to alleviate the suffering of millions from the hurricanes ravaging Latin America, the Caribbean, and parts of the USA;  the starvation and destitution and lack of medical care in so many countries from Venezuela, Yemen, Iraq and millions of refugees throughout the world. We pray for those children struggling to survive in refugee camps and avoid being sold into child marriage or sex trafficking. Let us cry out loud that the hundreds of children who could be reunited with relatives settled in countries like the UK can be moved quickly from the ‘jungle camp’ in Calais, France, before it is demolished at the end of the year.

Risen Lord Jesus, who came to your friends when all their hope was gone: come to us in the dark times. Come to those who despair, that they may feel your risen presence in their hearts.

Give light to those who sit in darkness. Cast down those who perpetrate violence and evil. Forgive our weakness and fear and help us remember you have given us a spirit of courage. Guide our way into the way of peace making and peace brokering.

Help us to live our faith, and express your love in our lives in all we do.  AMEN.

 

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, September 8, 2016

Remember, O God.
Remember how you, O God, were determined to kill the Israelites
whom you had brought out of Egypt,
because they had turned against you and worshiped other gods.
Remember how Moses called you to account?
How he reminded you that you had made promises of faithfulness
to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel?
Remember…that you remembered. And changed your mind.
And abandoned the disaster you had planned to bring on your people,
and let them live.
(Exodus 32:7-14)

Remind us too, O God, of all the promises of faithfulness we have made to one another.
Let the memories of the promises – of kinship, of friendship, of business relationships, of mutual responsibility, of national and international peace –
let those memories outweigh all the ways we have turned against one another.

Let it be the memories of the promises of faithfulness, that sway the decisions of leaders and peoples:

  • In Syria, where the opposition has suggested a transition plan toward free elections
  • In Hong Kong, where youth protest leaders won seats on the Legislative Council – only to have China respond by warnings that anyone who speaks in favor of Hong Kong independence will be punished
  • In South Sudan, that has agreed to allow more peace keepers into the country
  • In Ethiopia, as political violence continues to delay the distribution of aid to four million people hit by drought and floods
  • In Kenya, where the new Community Land Bill establishes a means for impoverished nomadic communities to acquire titles to their ancestral lands – a process that experts hope will help end land conflicts, boost development and improve investor relations
  • In Colombia, after the FARC rebel group postponed its meeting to ratify a peace agreement with the government for another week
  • In Gabon, where President Ali Bongo’s narrow election victory has stirred up fears of violence

Let it be the memories of the longing for faithfulness, that color our prayers for those who have died:

  • For Mother Teresa of Calcutta, declared a saint this week in a canonization Mass held by Pope Francis in the Vatican
  • For Phyllis Schlafly, who died this week after decades of being one of the most prominent leaders of the conservative Christian anti-feminist movement in the United States
  • For all whom we remember this weekend, on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. – the terrorists, the innocent, the rescuers, the lives that touched so many nations

Make us into your own image, O God.
Make us creatures of memory – not of memories of betrayals and distrust,
but, like you,  of faithfulness promised from age to age.

Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, July 14, 2016

There is a terrifying passage in ‘I and Thou’ by the Jewish mystic Martin Buber in which God says ‘I have sunk my hearing in the deafness of mortals’.  If this should be even partly true what a tremendous responsibility it places upon us to listen, to listen to each other with our whole attention, with our hearts, but what a difficult thing to do. ~ Elizabeth Bassett in “Beyond the Blue Mountains: Wisdom and Compassion on Living and Dying” (p. 93)

Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations… Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and digestion… My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The news recently has been a cataloged of ever greater misery, tragedy, horror, and violence depicting the broken relationships between groups and nations. Hurt breeds resentment and violence arising from a sense of frustrated helplessness. This makes the truth of the essential need to truly listen to each other haunting. Challenge and inspire me. I can only hope to do this through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit to enable me to fulfill, however falteringly, the command of the risen Christ, “Follow me!”

LET GOD…be Parent…speak…liberate me from my prisons…direct my path…infuse me with grace and love.

How do we reconcile God’s grace and love with our world where at least 80 are dead in Nice (pron. Neece), France as a result of a rampage driver, weaponry, and a hate-filled heart? Who did this? Why? What matter does it make? Hate and violence and death… Death and violence and hate…

  • The killings between black and white, police and citizens in the U.S.A. and in Kenya;
  • Bombings and murder of Christians and other minority faiths in Iraq;
  • The seizing of Christian villages by Kurds;
  • The bombings and warfare in South Sudan;
  • The territorial advancement by China onto militarized coral reefs and artificial islands in the South China Sea as platforms for their nuclear arms;
  • Over a thousand people have ‘disappeared’ without trace and 40,000 have been arrested and tortured in the last 3 years in Egypt according to Amnesty International;
  • Hunger and lack of food in Venezuela that is being tackled by the army because it is so pervasive.

Lord, help us to persevere in the face of so many discouragements to do whatever little bit of good we can wherever we are. Together these small acts form channels for your love and grace to be freed to transform our brokenness and overwhelm evil. Lord hear us and bless us.

With a new government and a second female Prime Minister installed in the UK, we pray for the challenges to be faced together, from people of very differing viewpoints and convictions, so that the good of the country – as well as bridge-building to repair shaken if not broken relationships with other groups and countries – can be undertaken in honesty and integrity.

We pray that all those, everywhere, may listen to each other before leaping into superficial response and action. Our heavy use of social media often makes this a default position rather than pausing, reflecting, and even daring to take time to pray… We continue to pray for the often bitter and divisive presidential electoral campaign in the U.S.A. So often at times like this we seem to revert to appealing to the lowest common denominator instead of offering a vision of the best… Forgive us when we get seduced by the attractiveness of power – thinking it glamorous rather than often seedy and corrupting.

Remind us, O God:

Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us…Child of God, known by name, and whose very hairs are numbered. Praise and adore God and thank him for ever and ever. ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu in “An African Prayer Book”

LET ME…be son or daughter…listen…walk out of my prisons through opened doors…follow your guidance…open up my being to your grace and love…Study and imitate…the perfect sonship of Jesus the Christ…the universal brother…or all other sons and daughters.

Amen.

World News This Week in Prayer- Thursday, April 7, 2016

He comes to us as One unknown,
without a name, as of old,
by the lakeside, He came to
those men who knew Him not.
He speaks to us the same words:
‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us
to the tasks which He has to
fulfill for our time. –Albert Schweitzer

You come to us, God, and yet we fail to recognize you, caught as we are in the trials and tribulations, in the sorrows and sins, of this daily life of ours.

  • You come to us in the rival Christian groups who are working together to save the holy site in Jerusalem described as the Tomb of Jesus.
  • You come to us in all refugees, in those migrants facing deportation to Turkey from Greece, in the more than 260,000 refugees of various nationalities in Yemen, in those fleeing violence in Honduras and El Salvador and seeking asylum in Mexico. We pray for those fleeing war, abuse, and poverty.
  • You come to us in those suffering from yellow fever in Kenya and China, in those suffering from curable diseases because they cannot afford the necessary medications.
  • You come to us in those who are drawn to or pressed into violence and terrorism throughout the world.

You come to us, O God, calling us to be agents of reconciliation, of health and healing, of justice and peace in our world, wherever we may be.

  • You come to us in neighbor and stranger, in those who look like us and those who look very different from us, in those who speak our language and those whose language sounds so foreign to our ears.
  • You come to us in the faces and lives of abused women and children, of victims of rape and child marriage and female genital mutilation, of those living year after year in refugee camps, of those who are perpetually hungry and thirsty and see no relief in sight.
  • You come to us in the voices of those calling for justice- in Burma, in Somalia, in the United States, in Syria, in Palestine, in Afghanistan.
  • You come to us in the cries of those demanding that their vote count, those demanding integrity on the part of their elected leaders- in England, in Iceland, in Russia, in China.
  • You come to us in the hopelessness of those living in poverty, wherever they may be, even as they look at the wealth which seems so far out of their reach.

You come to us and we fail to recognize you, caught as we are in our own cycles of self-pity and apathy. Yet you do not give up on us, even as you do not let us off the hook from doing your work in the world. Your voice speaks to us: ‘Follow me!’…on paths of justice which may be difficult and even dangerous, on journeys of compassion which may pull from us every ounce of courage and commitment. And you remind us, ever remind us, that we do not walk alone, for you are with us, guiding and guarding, leading and loving. Free us from the fears that bind us, that we may bring new life to the world.

You come to us, O God. May we be open to hearing your voice and to following your lead on this often-difficult journey we call Life. May it truly be so. Amen

 

World News This Week in Prayer – Thurs., March 18, 2016

Today we begin Holy Week, walking the Via Dolorosa with Jesus of Nazareth…sitting at the table at the Last Supper, watching and waiting in Gethsemane’s garden, seeing with horror and dread the arrest and torture and trials, and finally, weeping at the foot of the cross. But today, Gracious God, we begin with his arrival at Jerusalem, riding on a borrowed colt, and surrounded by people praising God loudly:

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

And then, as happens so often in our world even today, some of the religious people complained and admonished him, “Rabbi, order your disciples to stop. They’re making too much noise. They are offending the religious order. Tell them to stop.” And Jesus said to them, “I tell you,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

As we look around our world, O God, your world, as we open our eyes and ears and hearts, we become aware of the many situations which demand our attention, our intervention, our words… so why are we so often silent? Forgetting that Jesus said,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

Wars rage, and hopes for peace talks in Syria are dimming. The people of South Sudan continue to live in fear and flee their homes, with little hope of ever returning… yet we remain silent, forgetting that Jesus said,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

Everywhere we look, the mistreatment of girls and women continues–in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Turkey, yet some courageous young women in Palestine and the United States and Kenya and Guatemala are using their voices, their spoken word poems, to challenge and confront, to tell the truth, remembering that Jesus said,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

Even as we attempt to honor the Prince of Peace, contention seems to be the rule of the political day in so many places, with the people of Great Britain divided about remaining in the European Union, with the people of the United States divided about their choice of candidates in the Presidential primaries, with words being used to foster enmity and hate, separation and exclusion, while so many of us remain silent, forgetting that Jesus said,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

And throughout the world, refugees are being treated, not with welcome, but with anger and resentment, as hospitality is pushed aside, replaced by fear of the other. Where is our outrage, O God, as so many of us remain silent, forgetting that Jesus said,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

Why do we remain silent, O God? Is it out of fear of what other people will think of us? Is it out of fear for our jobs? Our lives? How do we live out the call of the prophets to “Do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with our God”? Jesus has told us, and his words echo again and again,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

Fill us with daring, O God of justice. Fill us with compassion. Fill us with the determination to be the people you have called us to be, to be the Body of Christ in this world. Open our ears to hear the words of Jesus as he says,

If these were silent, the very stones would shout out.

So make of us shouting stones, Lord of Mercy and Daring…shouting stones who dare to speak out for those who have no voice, for those forgotten by our world, for those who need someone to speak for them. And let us do it in the name of the One who spoke with his life for us–Jesus the Christ. Amen

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, November 12

Having but recently celebrated that moment “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month month” 97 years ago when the belligerents of World War I agreed to armistice, to the cessation of harmful deeds even in the absence of an agreed formula for a fully organized peace, let us lift hands and hearts in a spirit of armistice at our own 11th hour.

We pray for the end of:

  • death by suicide bomb in Beirut, Lebanon and anywhere else,
  • genocide in Burundi or anywhere else,
  • female genital mutilation in Kenya or anywhere else,
  • lethal travels for refugees from Syria or anywhere else,
  • torture in China or anywhere else,
  • legal, physical, political, and economic abuse.

God of prophets who have stormed in their critiques, we know such things are wrong. We pray you strengthen us to be your agents in ending such evils.

God of hearers of prophecy who have recognized error and changed their ways, we pray you use us to support others who are even more directly the agents in ending these wrongs.

We know that armistice is not enough. It is not enough that genocide and murder and mutilation are illegal. It is not enough that nations signed treaties or governments enact laws to protect children, to prohibit discrimination, or to guarantee security. We celebrate the end of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, but without impassioned attention to public health, an epidemic will come again. Forgive us for the weakness that tempts us to think that if dangers recede, then they must have disappeared. Energize us with the vigilance we need to end the scourges of infectious disease. Equip us with the willingness to care for the desperate refugees who would come among us. Instill in us the creativity to confront drought and desertification. Let us never accept the slow starvation of famine.

And yet we pray as well that you give us a cheerful spirit to meet not just challenges we have named but even challenges whose nature we may not even guess. Give us a proper respect for free elections in Myanmar and let us be forthright in celebrating the ability of former enemies to transfer power legally and peacefully. Let us greet the efforts of young men in the United States and in Kenya and in Australia to protest the continuing racism that scars the faces of our societies. Let us welcome the willingness of individuals and of corporations to apologize for errors and to set themselves on corrective paths.

In this as in every hour, we need the direction of your purpose to make our own lives meaningful. In this as in every hour, the world needs us to act as your servants. In this as in every hour, we seek your blessing.

Amen

World News This Week in Prayer- Thursday, September 24, 2015

“Now Israel, what does the LORD your God desire from you? Only this: fear him, walk in all his ways, love him, serve him with all your heart and in all your life.  Deuteronomy 10: 12 (NIV)

The Lord has shown you what is good. He has told you what he requires of you. You must act with justice. You must love to show mercy. And you must be humble as you live in the sight of your God. Micah 6: 8 (NIRV)

While preparing for this Sunday’s service, it reminded me that underpinning all of Jesus’ teaching- whether on healing, speaking, serving, living – is the crucial relationship we have with God.  If we love God and want to walk according to his will and purpose, as Jesus did, then everything else falls into place and challenges so many of our default positions.  We criticise others because they are not as we are – which is often in their favor, but which we find hard to believe or even think!

And so we see it reflected in the news, where bombs in a Sanaa, Yemen mosque killed worshippers celebrating Eidh-al-Adha (commemorating Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac); Bangladeshi bloggers are killed because they express ideas contrary to fundamentalist Muslims; and so with ISIL in the Middle East, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and so many ‘Christian’ countries throughout history.  We may no longer kill, but we try to kill their spirits by marginalising, ignoring, humiliating, and otherwise denying their humanity held in common with us as created by God.

Lord, forgive our arrogance and closed minds.  Open our hearts by your Holy Spirit to the teaching of the Word made Flesh

We  hold before you the suffering of so many in Sumatra, due to fires which have been raging for several months, causing high levels of air pollution in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.  And as fires continue to blaze throughout California, USA, we give thanks that some prisoners used as volunteer firefighters are helping and simultaneously finding a new purpose in life.

Lord, help us to turn tragedies into opportunities to work together as your family here on our shared earth. Lord, have mercy.

This week has revealed the corrupt practices of so many multi-national companies and governments – from German car manufacturer VW cheating and lying to obtain false low carbon emissions for their diesel cars, to various governments in recent history including Germany, the USA, France, Panama and especially the United Kingdom, teaching how to interrogate with torture methods that leave no physical trace. In Kenya 500 police officers have been charged with crimes including murder.

Lord, we mutilate and destroy our brothers and sisters and the world you have given us.  Teach us anew to honor and cherish all of your creation which thereby contains that which is divine. Lord, have mercy.

We give thanks for the woman in Liverpool, England,  who disturbed by the plight of refugees has literally opened her home to a refugee family. We give thanks too for so many in Greece, already struggling themselves to survive, who care, feed, and provide tents to arriving refugees.

We give thanks, too, for all the high-tech work going on in so many places towards helping those paralyzed to have the hope of walking again; and for low-tech ways of improving agriculture in countries struggling with hunger and declining water supplies.

As Pope Francis visits the United States, bless him and all those to whom he is reaching out, in the Congress, at the United Nations, and in the communities he is visiting. Open all to hear his call to care lovingly for this planet and for the people which populate it. Open hearts to hear his call for Mercy and Justice.

Lord, open our eyes to see and give thanks for the people you have called to do your work in the world and who have answered with the dedication of their lives. Lord, have mercy.

God our challenger and disturber, help us to confront
all that makes for death and despair
in our lives, our communities, our world.
May we never lose sight
of the possibility of transformation
and be continually surprised
by people who believe in one another.    AMEN.
                                          (Joy Mead, in Friend and Enemies)

World News This Week in Prayer – Thursday, June 18, 2015

Well may the world go,
The world go, the world go,
Well may the world go,
When I’m far away.
— Pete Seeger (c. 1973)

For months now, this has been my wake-up song, a conscious choice to spend my first moments of each day letting go of all I can’t control, of all I cannot or dare not comprehend. Entrusting the whole world into God’s hands.

But today when I woke, it was clear that the world was not going well at all. More drive-by shootings in my own city. The news of a young white man shooting down nine black people, described as well-respected mentors, during a prayer circle at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. Allegations by UNICEF that at least 129 children were killed, with boys castrated and girls raped, during a government offensive against rebels last month in South Sudan.

Earlier in the week, bombs found at an abandoned stronghold of Boko Haram Islamists exploded, killing at least 13 people and injuring 45 others in northeast Nigeria.  The United Nations reported that in 2014, nearly 60 million people were displaced by war, conflict or persecution – the biggest global refugee population since the year World War II ended. The U.N. World Food Programme is facing a shortfall in donor funding, and will have to cut food rations – by a third! – for half a million mainly Somali and South Sudanese refugees living in camps in northern Kenya.

North Korea has been hit by what it describes as its worst drought in a century, which is expected to increase chronic food shortages in a country where almost a third of children under five are stunted because of poor nutrition. Several provinces in Pakistan are running out of ground water, with no system in place to replenish it. Much of Zimbabwe has had insufficient rain to support crops. International aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that Yemen’s health care system is on the verge of collapse, while 80% of the population urgently need aid.

No, the world isn’t going well at all.
And tonight, I have no pretty words of prayer, only undiluted anguish.
And anger.

God, we, your beloved children, still have not learned how to identify and stop those who choose to brutalize and denigrate and kill others, before untold damage is done.

Lord, hear our prayer.

We still all too often act as if lamenting violence is a competitive sport, with accusations that this group doesn’t care enough about the deaths in that group, or that group doesn’t care enough about the root causes of the hunger or poverty or powerlessness or oppression in this group.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Millennia after you, God, started trying to teach us that you are God of all, we still fall into thinking that the people near us, or like us, matter more. That our drought is more pressing than their drought. That the names of our dead need to be read out across the land, while the names of those who died in other lands remain unspoken here.

Lord, hear our prayer.

Well may the world go,
The world go, the world go,
Well may the world go,
When I’m far away.

Lord, instill in us your heart, your very own heart.
Lord, instill in us your love, that we – all of us – may join with you in making it so.

 

World News This Week in Prayer- Thursday, April 9, 2015

Loving God,
we pray for the opportunity to join you in the work of creation. The Bible declares that creation occurred first with light, when the world was full of emptiness and disorder. We look around and see disorder of our own time:
  • in the United States, we are shocked by the cell phone recording of a white policeman gunning down a fleeing black man, especially when we compare it to the reports which the officer and others filed. We had hoped we could trust the agencies of law enforcement.
  • in Afghanistan, someone dressed as a soldier (was he a soldier?) shot and killed one and wounded others, this incident occurring shortly after a significant diplomatic visit. What was the purpose? Who was the real target?
  • in Kenya, widespread grief follows the murderous attack on Christians at Garissa University. When did religious identity become a way to identify victims instead of unifying your children?
All these events and many others empty our families, our societies, ourselves, and our world. Our need to join in the work of creation is all too evident.
But hovering in concern over all that needed to be filled and brought in order, you first created light. Even today light is still being created. We see light, light that we pray that together with you, we may call “good”:
  • in the possibility that the discussion and diplomacy may replace war and war profiteering in Iran and throughout the Middle East.
  • in robust conversations in public and private spheres in the United States undertaken in the hope that a larger justice, a more loving kindness, and a deeper humility may inform the entire nation.
  • in Cuba and the United States as they continue to plan steps of rapprochement in upcoming meetings in Panama.
We pray for light in our hearts and minds. We pray for light to see our way into a future that has less discrimination, less poverty, and less injustice.
The light of resurrection stirs Christians in this Easter season. The light of Passover liberation inspires Jews. The light of possibility shines for all your children throughout the world, dear God. Give us strength to follow the light as it leads us forward. Amen.