I have decided to stick with love… Hate is too great a burden to bear. Martin Luther King Oh Lord, your house is built with understanding and compassion – it is our quiet center. If only we could grasp its power. In small agitations and overwhelming calamities, during times of lament and great injustices help […]
Turning the World Upside Down: Prayers for the Uttarakhand Dam Disaster and a Wounded Creation (February 12, 2021)
There has been an unexpected glitch preventing the prayers being edited and posted as usual yesterday for which we apologise. Here they are now. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . […]
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 […]
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 […]
Help Us Get Our Responses Right: Cyclone Amphan, Michigan’s Dams, and Kabul (May 21, 2020)
Even as the world turns, it seems the world has stood still in the shock of the pandemic. But we know this is not truly so, even as we know that you, Lord, hold all in your hand and love what you have created. Science tells us that hurricanes and cyclones will continue to get […]
One Ecosystem: Prayers for a Calving Antarctic Glacier, Locust Swarms, and Syria’s Displaced (February 13, 2020)
Ah, Lord God, our creator, our father. The world is changing. Again. It’s difficult to realize, as I write when the sky is wall to wall blue and a plane suddenly adds a tracery of white, that that interesting line is part of what is changing our world. As another huge iceberg calves from […]
O Be Careful, Little Eyes: An Advent Prayer for the Climate and Desecrated Graves in Alsace (December 5, 2019)
We open our hearts to you, God of compassion, God of power, Because we know we need your creative power and precision of language when we speak, we need to learn the voice of clarity, to see with vision, to hear with discretion and act with generosity. In this season of hyper-charged commercialism, ever attempting […]
I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills: Prayers for Floods, Fires, Europe’s Heat Wave, and Rescued Turtles (June 27, 2019)
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2 (NRSV) Rescuing and Redeeming God, we lift our eyes up to you. We lift our eyes out of the chaos of our lives seeking […]
How Majestic Is Your Name: A Psalm 8 Prayer for Peacekeepers, Asylum Seekers and the Earth (November 22, 2018)
Note: Words in italics are from Ps 8 (NRSV) O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! As cosmologists view a “ghost galaxy” hidden in sight… You have set your glory above the heavens. As the UN tries to recruit more women to be Blue Helmets peacekeepers, Mali has the […]
How Long, O Lord: Prayers for the Rohingya, Abuse Survivors and Earthquakes in Venezuela and Iran (August 30, 2018)
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Psalm 13:1-2 (NRSV) How long, O Lord? Our hearts and […]