…And the floodwaters covered the earth… (Genesis 7)
I thought I knew what I was doing, when I offered to cover for this week’s scheduled prayer writer, whose whole family had come down with the flu. Easy. I had half a week to prepare, nothing much booked for those days. Easy.
I didn’t know that an update to one of my devices early in the week would break a whole bunch of apps on that device, with ripple effects to all my other devices, and further ripples eating up all my spare time. Nothing disastrous, just distracting. I didn’t know that I would wake every morning to the news of a new horror perpetrated by my own government, and go to sleep to the news of yet another. Not much I could do about any of it, just hard to see past it to paying attention to the news of the whole world. I didn’t know that I’d spend half of today trying to catch up on things that should have been done earlier in the week. I didn’t know that where I live, the sun would finally break through several weeks of fog, and that I would give in to spending the afternoon at the local wildlife refuge – ostensibly to clear my mind so I could write the prayers after dinner, but really to flood my heart with birds and trees, grasses and wind and sun, with things that bring me to life. I didn’t know that on the way home, I would learn that an elderly neighbor who had a stroke a few days ago was now on hospice.
And so go most of our lives. Flooded with distractions. Overwhelmed with too many concerns, too much to do, too many interruptions, too much need to feed our hearts and souls by briefly stepping away from it all.
Lord, in our distractions, hear our prayer.
We pray for all facing physical flooding and severe weather:
- In South Africa, flooding has “devastated” much of Kruger National Park, with recovery expected to take years.
- The same heavy rains that caused flooding there, are also leading to major floods in parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, and Botswana.
- Days of record-breaking rain has seen local states of emergency declared in five regions across New Zealand’s North Island
- Australia issued flash flood warnings for Victoria last week – and this week is expecting a major heatwave, which will probably exacerbate already raging wildfires due to extremely dry conditions in much of the continent
- A vast winter storm is expected to hit much of the U.S. this weeking, sweeping snow, ice and brutal cold across nearly 2,000 miles from the south-west to the east coast and affecting more than 200 million people. The system is expected to disrupt travel, bring down trees and power lines, and create the risk of prolonged power outages, followed by dangerously cold air.
- Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula suffered its worst snowstorm in 60 years, with vast drifts several meters tall that blocked entrances to buildings and buried cars
Good Lord, protect us.
We pray for those perpetrating and those being inundated by floods of misinformation, disinformation, coercion and corruption, and for those standing strong against them:
- The lies about election fraud, better prices on consumer goods, improved crime rates, impartial justice, and greater governmental transparency – to name just a few topics – that recur in nearly every speech by U.S. President Trump, and are reiterated and amplified by social media
- Denmark, and all NATO countries standing up against Trump’s threats to “take Greenland” and impose tariffs on NATO member nations
- Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney countering Trump’s determination to dominate and control the world, with a vision for a world built instead on the values Canada embodies: progress and justice, protecting the vulnerable against the powerful, a pluralistic society that works, where diversity is a strength not a weakness.
Good Lord, deliver us.
We pray for all who think they are too tired to pray, too worn out to hope, too distracted by daily life to know where to begin to heal our world. We pray for those too overwhelmed to realize that in every moment of joy or thanksgiving, in every moment of longing for a better life for our children and our children’s children, in every tender moment of caring – they are already making a difference.
Good Lord, bless and keep us.
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