A CHRISTMAS BLESSING by Christine Valters Paintner online Abbess at AbbeyoftheArts.com Reproduced with permission This blessing dances at the doorway of light and dark, knows both as sacred: fertile womb space, miracle of blooming. This blessing breathes through those moments of labor when you too birth the holy into this fragile, luminous, hurting world as Mary […]
Prayers for Afghanistan
Afghanistan is carried here through decades of war and its aftermath, through hunger, avalanches, earthquakes and floods, and through the education and rights of women and girls. Journalists, aid workers and teachers appear often, and thanksgiving is offered for those who keep schools and newsrooms going in hard conditions.
The Season of Waiting: An Advent Prayer After the Ischia Mudslide (December 1, 2022)
Those who wait for you know how the mark of a true blessing is that it will take you where you did not think to go. Once through this door there will be more: more doors more blessings more who watch and wait for you but here at this door of beginning the blessings cannot […]
You Have the Truth to Set Us Free: A Thanksgiving Prayer for the Trafficked and Displaced (November 24, 2022)
“… for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of His Holy Word.” John Robinson. Lord, the news is difficult, often strange, maybe false, maybe half truth, out of context and fuelled by conspiracy. What a relief to know that you have the truth contained within yourself; granted […]
Grief and Hope: A Prayer After the Thailand School Shooting and the Kabul Bombing (October 13, 2022)
We long to become disciples of silence and hear in that shimmery soundlessness the voice of the One who whispers in stillness, whose singing vibrates in stones, who out of the silence calls forth a radical commitment of which we do not yet know the shape. – Christine Valters Paintner We pray to the One […]
The Lord’s Prayer for a Hurting World: Violence Against Women, Floods, and Global Drought (September 22, 2022)
Writer’s note: I have no idea where this version of the Lord’s Prayer came from, so I apologise for not giving credit where credit is due. I know I’ve amended it over the years, but it is something that draws me back time and again. So I am using it as a framework for this […]
Not a Spirit of Fear: A Prayer After the Attack on Salman Rushdie, and for Refugees (August 18, 2022)
Holy One, In these times, with the world news heavily upon us, we reflect upon words from 2 Timothy: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” (New Living Translation) Ten years ago, speaking in New York (U.S.), Indian-born British-American novelist Salman Rushdie said that […]
O God, Why Are You Silent: Prayers for Ukraine, Rafah, Wildfires, and Pakistan’s Floods (August 11, 2022)
Writers note: As I faced writing these prayers, all that kept resonating through my mind was the hymn, “O God, Why Are You Silent” written by Marty Haugen and found in the Evangelical Lutheran Worship. The words of the first two verses resound in my breaking heart (it can be sung to any 7676D hymn […]
We Bring You Everything: A Prayer for the Lambeth Conference and a Scorched Planet (August 4, 2022)
Writer’s note: I am one of half dozen members of our small World in Prayer Team who needed a break. But then I read last week’s posting and realised I could not be party to this important ministry faltering – albeit temporarily. I find myself with nothing, yet also too much, to pray for – […]
Take Heart: A Prayer for Those Who Dread the News, from Church Shootings to Earthquakes (June 23, 2022)
Dearly beloved Children of God, Do you sometimes wake not to prayer, but to dread, fearing what new horror will show up in the news? Afraid even to go to church, after this week’s news of three killed in a mass shooting at an Episcopal church in Alabama, U.S., and two priests shot dead at […]
May Our Groans Be Prayer: For Gun Violence, Hunger in Afghanistan and Yemen, and Nepal (June 2, 2022)
God, there are hardly any words for these times. You promise that when we are in these unfathomable places Your very Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words. We need that now, as we groan through our exhausted bodies and tattered hearts. May our groans be prayer, be release for all we feel without […]
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