Lord, time after time the news reflects what has happened; this week’s events reflecting what has already happened. So we pray for those for whom the news is also “olds” – for they remember the pain, the trauma, the fear, the deep changes in their lives.
We pray for those caught in the fire in a multi-story building in Johannesburg, South Africa and for those still suffering trauma from earlier fires.
We pray for those who watch the North Korean missile firings with horror and remember.
In the US Fourth of July celebrations of thirteen American colonies adoption of the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming citizens’ right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in every announcement of liberation we pray also for the people of Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa and Idlib, Syria.
As Canada celebrates 150 years since the 1867 Constitution of Canada allowed for the merger of 3 colonies. We pray for Indigenous people across the world, and especially for the First Nations, Inuit and Metis of Canada, the Native Hawaiian, American Indian and Alaska Natives of the US, the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, the Māori Tribes of New Zealand and the Indigenous Australian Peoples.
Following the arrest of Ebtisam al-Saegh, a human rights activist in Bahrain and the peace-and-love celebration in Malheur National Forest, Oregon, USA where there were 15 arrests and 2 deaths, we pray for those who peacefully demonstrate remembering especially those who protested in Washington DC, USA in January and still face legal charges.
We pray for the life of baby Charlie Gard and his parents, as the legal case in the UK has ended and now others try to intervene. We also pray for other bereaved parents in their grief.
Lawrence Moore, a church mission and discipleship consultant who also attends Worsley Road United Reformed Church in Salford, England, prays:
“O God,
There are many who pray far more desperately for the coming of your Kingdom than I do.
They beg you for daily bread because they go to bed hungry.
They pray for deliverance from oppression and exploitation.
They long for people who look and behave like you –
who see their desperation and are moved to tears of compassion or
a burning anger that will not let them rest while things stay as they are.
Fill me with your Holy Spirit, I pray,
that my heart will overflow with your compassion,
that I will find the courage to stand up against injustice,
that I will make a Jesus-shaped difference to my world.
Grant, by your grace, that I will be the answer to the prayers of the very least
and proclaim with my life as well as my mouth
that Jesus is the Messiah.”
Amen.
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