Heavenly Father and Mother, be with us today and in all times.
We call upon you in our most vulnerable moments. We call for you to bear witness to our lives, to help us take the steps needed to serve you with love, compassion, faith, and understanding. Continue to remind us that it is our greatest duty to serve you and all God’s people all over this beautiful and hurting world…to serve with hearts of grace and souls stitched with the love that you teach us and show us every day.
- God of protection, please stand with Sandra Bland and her loved ones. Please stand with all the bodies that are destroyed by injustice, blindness, racism, and cowardice. Break through the boundaries that continue to tear the United States apart, traffic stop after traffic stop, this nation still suffering from the consequences of the sin of slavery.
- God of comfort, please watch over the community of Lafayette, LA in the USA, and all those affected by the shootings at the Grand Theater. Show us your dream of a world where there is no more gun violence, where you can wipe away the tears from this world. Help us to be healers.
- God of justice, as the people of New Orleans, LA, in the USA remember the tenth anniversary of the devastation of their city wrought by Hurricane Katrina, continue to fill them with hope for the future and fill us with the determination to never again permit such wide-scale neglect and failure to respond to need happen anywhere in your world.
- God of healing, please bring strength and wisdom to the medical community as they work to bring healing to all those struggling with illness— chronic, acute, or mental. Open our awareness to those especially struggling with hepatitis C, which caused more than 15,000 deaths in 2013. Please bring funding and attention to a disease that is so expensive to treat and leaves so many suffering.
- God of strength, we need your protection for the innocents from ISIS and the Nusra Front, for the 230 people who were captured next to the Khabur River in northeastern Syria, for the nearly 600,000 Syrian Christians have had to flee their own country, for the 3.1 million displaced Iraqis who need our prayers. And we pray for all of the religious minorities suffering in Iraq and Syria.
We believe in understanding…and we have hope. Hope for the Nuclear Deal the U.S. has made with Iran; hope that there can be greater cross-cultural understanding.
- God of mystery, we have hope that you will continue to work in mysterious ways. As we look forward to Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. in September, we fervently hope that his talks with Congress and the United Nations can connect us more as one people, people of God.
- God of creation, we are thankful for the beauty that surrounds us each day. We grieve the killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, as well as for the on-going destruction of so many of your creatures. Inspire us to walk upon this earth more gently…a little more tenderly. Let us remind ourselves and one another that only by passing through the darkness can we understand light; that only by bearing witness to each other’s pains and stories can we truly walk hand in hand.
Let us lend our hands to those who need healing, and our hearts to those who need our touch. Let us fall to our knees when we are lost, becoming humble in your presence, God, and opening ourselves with your love.
Let us break through the fear of misunderstanding and suspicion to a world where we can all support each other a little bit more. Let us be enraptured by wonder and embraced by your presence. Let us move with you, as you move in and through us.
Heavenly Father and Mother, be with us today and in all times. Amen.
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