World in Prayer

Sharing in God’s loving compassion for all

Prayers for Brazil

Brazil comes into these prayers through drought, floods and mudslides, building fires and collapses, and the heavy toll of the pandemic. The Amazon and its Indigenous peoples are a steady concern, as is poverty in the cities, with thanks given for coral discoveries, scientists and leaders working for the forest.

O God, Why Are You Silent: Nagorno-Karabakh, Rwanda, and a Million COVID Deaths (October 1, 2020)

O God, why are you silent? I cannot hear your voice; the proud and strong and violent all claim you and rejoice; you promised you would hold me with tenderness and care. Draw near, O Love, enfold me, and ease the pain I bear.           Marty Haugen/ Tune: Herzlich mich verlangen […]

God of Our Ancestors: A Prayer as US COVID Deaths Pass 200,000 and Wildfires Burn (September 24, 2020)

God of Our Ancestors, Since before we were born, you have knit your people into a great reimagining of purpose and life. You call us by your mercy and claim us with your truth. Even in these days of protest and pandemic, show us what it means that you are the Creator, Christ, and Comforter. […]

May You Be Well: Prayers for Farmworkers, the Moria Camp Fire, and Sudan’s Floods (September 10, 2020)

May you be well, And all whom you love, And those you work with, And all who eat of the crops you handle. That has been my prayer/mantra at least one afternoon a week for the past month, as I joined with other volunteers to prepare 100,000 Covid-19 prevention kits to be given to agricultural […]

Help Us to Breathe: Prayers for Jacob Blake, Kenosha, Beirut, and Hurricane Laura (August 27, 2020)

Holy One, As we center ourselves for prayer, remind us that you are as close to us as our very breath, even in these times when you may feel so far away to so many of us; in these times when many of us find it so hard to breathe. You are there with us. […]

Abide with Us: Prayers for Beirut, Belarus, and the Last Arctic Ice Shelf (August 13, 2020)

Holy Creator, You are at our Beginning and our Ending, the one who wakes us in the morning and settles us to sleep at night. When we move through the fog of uncertainty, bring a piercing light of a clarity, even if just for a moment. When we want to plop down in heaps of […]

Help Us to Hear These Voices: Prayers for Housekeepers, Child Soldiers, and Beirut (August 6, 2020)

Dear Lord, help us to hear these voices. I pray today that my knees and back hold up.  I pray that my mom and children are ok in our two-bedroom apartment while I work at a hotel and clean 15 rooms each day. I pray that my paycheck will be enough, that my car holds […]

We Cannot Go Back to Normal: A Prayer on Inequality, Hong Kong, and Rising Hate Crimes (July 30, 2020)

I never anticipated that now, in the midst of an abundant summer following a beautiful spring, we would still be living out a winter spirituality. But the Covid-19 Pandemic has brought this upon us.  But…We’re All in This Together, Right?….except….  Lowering of pollution that first month—the air so crisp and clear and breathable. Everything stood […]

Kitten-Shaped Prayers: Ethiopia’s Oromo Protests, Hong Kong’s Security Law, and a Myanmar Landslide (July 2, 2020)

The World in Prayer team member who wrote this week’s prayers has spent the past 6 weeks catching, taming, and finding homes for a litter of feral kittens. It has, she says, definitely affected how she understands God, and how she prays for the world. “You’ll have to forgive me,” she writes, “if these prayers […]

How Long, O Lord: Prayers for the Pandemic, a Mexico Earthquake, and Arizona Wildfires (June 25, 2020)

(Many thanks to Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor/author, Nadia Bolz-Weber, for some of the prayer petitions.) God who is called by many names, God of this earth and all its peoples, today we are crying out, how long, O Lord? How long until we can touch our parents and beloved elders? (even as we thank you for […]

Crack Our Hearts Open: Prayers for Brazil’s Pandemic, a Qom Family in Argentina, and New Delhi (June 11, 2020)

Christ, Jesus our friend and companion in the streets, in police stations, on curbsides, at take out restaurants, in hospital waiting rooms, in public health offices that are conducting contact tracing phone calls, in hallways of governments, and with those who listen to testimony. You, Lord, who wait for us to open the door, to […]