Prayers for the United States

Prayers naming the United States have followed storms, tornadoes, wildfires and floods across many states, along with elections and political tension, gun violence, and questions of migration and race. Health, mental health and the well-being of ordinary households appear often, as do thanksgivings for its landscapes and wild places.

Wake the Sleepers: Prayers for Canada’s Unmarked Graves, Tigray, and a Building Collapse (June 24, 2021)

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. –Concluding Prayer for Compline, from The Book of Common Prayer “When evening had come, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, […]

Hush the Storms of Anxiety: Prayers for Colombia’s Car Bombings, Hunger in North Korea, and Juneteenth (June 17, 2021)

O Maker of Heaven and Earth, you extravagantly pour out your love upon us to drench and anoint all of creation. It is out of this love that you gave us a home and created an earth of unsurpassed beauty– and called it good. You continue to recreate and repair this world with that same […]

Creator of the Star-Fields: Prayers for Burkina Faso, Afghanistan, and Israel and Palestine (June 10, 2021)

Creator of the star-fields, During this new moon week, when the sky is the deepest depth of dark, the canopy of stars are especially visible in their brilliance. Pin-pricks of light on the velvet drape of night. We can see an unnameable number of stars, and there are many more we cannot see with the […]

Imagine Transformation: Prayers for Mali’s Coup, Gaza, and the Kamloops Children (June 3, 2021)

With all the pain, violence, and sorrow that we see and experience, how is it possible to not grow hard? Some days it seems nearly impossible to see compassion and hope at work in the world. In times like these, we can send compassion and hope out into the world. Loving God, we come to […]

How Long, O Lord: Prayers for Migrant Children, the Gaza Ceasefire, and Nyiragongo (May 27, 2021)

Listen, Lord, as I pray! You are faithful and honest and will answer my prayer. (Ps. 143:1*) We pray for the unaccompanied children still arriving at the Mexico – USA border. We thought the situation was easing as fewer children arrived. Now we realize that children are afraid of the conditions in the holding centers […]

Lord Have Mercy: Prayers for Jerusalem and Gaza, Kabul’s Schoolgirls, and Kazan (May 13, 2021)

Dear Lord, Outside my door it is spring. Winter snows cling to the mountains under a clear blue sky and there is a buzzing among the flowers of the over wintered kale. Here in the US we have celebrated Mother’s Day with the flower markets lighthearted and busy. Our celebrations seem short-lived amidst a pandemic […]

Father Earth and Mother Sky: Prayers for Indianapolis, Tigray, and India’s Oxygen Crisis (April 29, 2021)

Oh God, Our Father Earth and Mother Earth, Help us to center our hearts, our thoughts, our yearnings, to let go of past wrongs and uncertain futures, to let the air out and take a simple breath in – here in the present of your eternal time. We acknowledge the lands of our ancestors. We […]

Let Justice Roll Down: Earth Day Prayers After the Chauvin Verdict, for India and Chad (April 22, 2021)

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Amos 5:24 Dear God, Justice. Justice. Justice. This is what we cry out all the day long, Lord, as we pray for a more equitable world for the people whom you love so deeply and infinitely. God we pray that we might […]

You Keep Track of Our Sorrows: Prayers for Daunte Wright, Afghanistan, and a Warming Earth (April 15, 2021)

O God, you come to us wherever and however we might be. No matter how much we may not believe it, we are worthy of your love and grace. Therefore, we uplift to you all of our raggedy and incomplete prayers to you—the ones that fall from our lips, the ones that remain hidden within […]

Living Toward Resurrection: Indonesia’s Floods, Taiwan’s Train Crash, and Rwanda (April 8, 2021)

God of new life, In these Easter days the wonder of the Risen Christ is close. Walking in the budding woods, resurrection is everywhere, the heart-song of the wild daffodil’s golden center, the magnolia’s blushed cup, the downy new leaf and the rippling brook. It is clear that life-death-life is the pattern at the center […]