By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1:78-79 God, at the end of […]
Prayers for Thailand
Thailand's grief after school shootings runs through these prayers, along with the call for tighter gun laws that followed. They also carry the cross-border shelling with Cambodia and the fragile ceasefire, and the typhoons, floods and life-threatening heat that reach across Southeast Asia.
Away in a Manger: An Advent Prayer for the Displaced and for Prisoners Freed in Belarus (December 18, 2025)
Away in a manger, No crib for his bed. Advent Jesus, Our hearts break for those who are displaced due to war, violence, oppression, or persecution, who have nowhere to lay their weary heads. Our souls ache for the homeless who are facing winter weather and have no place to stay warm. And our spirits […]
This Is No Time for a Child to Be Born: Advent Prayers for Gaza and Indonesia’s Floods (December 11, 2025)
An interpretation, in prayer, of Madeleine L’Engle’s poem: “This Is No Time for a Child to Be Born” Christmas 1973 O, Word of words, you were here at the beginning and you are here with each of us through the short spans of life on this Earth. You know the giant arcs of time, and so […]
In the Stillness: Prayers After Southern Asia’s Floods and the Hong Kong Tower Fire (December 4, 2025)
“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 […]
God of Memory: A Prayer for Hiroshima at Eighty, School Shootings, and Afghanistan’s Earthquake (September 4, 2025)
The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. – Psalm 121:8 God of Memory, hear our prayers, Hear our prayer among the dailiness of our lives wherever we make our home on this earth, wherever we walk our dogs, tend our gardens, scrub our pots and pans, read our books, receive our […]
You Hold the Whole World: Prayers for Gaza, Wildfires in Canada and France, and Unvaccinated Children (July 17, 2025)
Loving Creator, You are the One who holds the whole world in Your hands. And so, we pray today for areas in our city, nation, and world in need of Your healing and presence. For Palestine where over 58,000 have been killed so far, with the latest Israeli strike killing at least 32. We pray […]
Love Lives Again: A Holy Week Prayer After the Moscow Attack and Baltimore Bridge Collapse (March 28, 2024)
God of us all, Love lives again. Love triumphs over the hate, pain, and death. You were there at the very beginning of time and gave us the beauty of this world: gorgeous flowers and trees, oceans, and mountains, galaxies we will never comprehend. Yet, you still knew we needed your love. You gave us […]
This Blessing Calls You Home: A Christmas Blessing and Prayer for Every Nation on Earth (December 22, 2022)
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 […]
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 […]
One Day: A Holocaust Memorial Day Prayer for Refugees and Snowbound Camps in Syria (January 27, 2022)
You didn’t think about yesterday, and tomorrow may not happen, it was only today that you had to cope with and you got through it as best you could. Iby Knill, survivor of the Holocaust. One Day is the theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial (27th January 2022). On this Holocaust Memorial, Creator God, we […]