“In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.”
-Howard Thurman
At least 1,300 people have been killed in floods that have ravaged southern Asia over the past few weeks, with hundreds more still missing and millions displaced across the rain-soaked region. The flooding has been particularly devastating in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Be with your people, Beloved. Enfold them in your love and light.
Poisonous dust falls from the sky over the town of Ogijo, Nigeria. The toxic soot billows from crude factories that recycle lead for car battery companies in the United States. Dust and soil samples show lead levels up to 186 times beyond what is recognized as hazardous. Lead poisoning worldwide is estimated to cause far more deaths each year than malaria and HIV/AIDS combined. It causes seizures, strokes, blindness and lifelong intellectual disabilities. The World Health Organization makes clear that no level of lead in the body is safe.
Lead us to expansive and compassionate reasoning in our search for creative solutions.
Dubrovnik, Croatia, is famous for its stunning coastline, but last week the city found itself buried under a tide of plastic trash. Strong southern currents in the Adriatic Sea pushed debris onto the shores of Banje Beach and along the waterfront. Local officials said most of the waste appeared to come from Albania, based on labels and materials found among the piles. The city, known for its natural beauty and rich biodiversity, has spent years trying to cut down on plastic. Dubrovnik signed a pledge in 2020 to reduce plastic waste. Yet the sheer amount of trash carried in from elsewhere shows how global the problem has become.
Guide us to embrace the world’s natural treasures as our siblings, not simply as resources we can use.
Deputies in the Italian parliament have voted unanimously to introduce the crime of femicide – the murder of a woman, motivated by gender – as a distinct law to be punished with a life sentence. From now on, Italy will record every murder of a woman that is motivated by her gender as femicide. Italy will now join Cyprus, Malta and Croatia as EU member states that have introduced a legal definition of femicide into their criminal codes.
May we love one another as you love us, fostering love and peace.
Anti-corruption watchdog and police in Hong Kong, China, have arrested 14 suspects in a probe into the city’s deadliest fire in decades, finding “substandard” netting on building exteriors that failed to halt flames from spreading. The world’s deadliest residential building fire since 1980 broke out at the high-rises of Wang Fuk Court in the city’s northern Tai Po district. There has been an outpouring of grief across the Chinese finance hub for the 159 known deaths, with dozens more suffering injuries from the fire.
Through all the destruction that we cause, lead us back to you.
Pope Leo XIV took part in celebrations for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in the northwestern town of Iznik, Turkey, alongside the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew. Pope Leo XIV condemned the use of religion for justifying “war,” “violence” or “fanaticism” and urged Roman Catholics to mobilize their faith and unify others “regardless of ethnicity, nationality, religion or personal perspectives.”
May we lean into the beauty of “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Ps 46:10)
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Interested in writing for World in Prayer? We have an opening for one more writer on our team of volunteers.
A few things it might help you to know as you prayerfully consider this possibility:
- We believe strongly that God loves and cares about every human being. As did Jesus, we lean liberal, supporting the rights of persons/groups that those in power look down on – women, LBGTQ persons, minorities, the poor, the neglected and overlooked. We care about the environment, government, human rights, the arts, scientific discoveries and just about every other joy and wonder of all God’s creation. Although all the current team members are Christian, we come from several different denominations, and also recognize and celebrate that God can and does work through other faith traditions. While we often use Christian concepts, hymns, quotes and language in the prayers, we are careful not to even appear to give preference to news or actions by Christian groups. We also try to model many different ways of prayer – from litanies where the news is summarized, followed by a prayer response; all the way to days when we whine that we’re not in the mood to pray. We trust that God will use even our most seemingly-inadequate prayers to work for good.
- Each week, two team members are scheduled to serve. The writer is responsible for selecting which news items to include and drafting the resulting prayers. The editor lightly reviews the draft for factual accuracy, coherence, spelling, etc., then formats and posts the prayers to our website (from which the email edition is automatically generated). The deadline for the writer is Wednesday evening (US time), which give the editor all day Thursday to do their job so the prayers can get posted by midnight. (That was our best compromise between users who want the news to be as current as possible for Sunday worship, and those who want to be able to copy the prayers for distribution in Sunday worship bulletins.) Some of the 12-15 team members prefer only to serve as writers, some prefer to edit, some take turns at both, and some start out sure that they only want to be one or the other and then unexpectedly find themselves interested in the other role as well.
- Each team member usually serves approximately twice in a 3-month period. We sent out a sign-up sheet once a quarter, and you choose the dates you want. We’re also a good group – always willing to jump in and help out if a scheduled person is sick or lost internet connection or has some other unexpected development that would make it hard for them to meet their deadline. Even though we only meet via email, we enjoy each other!
Does this sound tempting? Drop us a note at worldinprayer@aol.com!
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