Creator of the Stars of Night, On the eve of Epiphany, on the eve of the first full moon of the year, on the eve of the funeral of Pope Benedict, hear my prayer for the tomorrows of our world. The USA needs to elect a speaker of the house so that congress can be […]
Shine Your Light: A Diwali Prayer Against Child Marriage and for COP26 in Glasgow (November 4, 2021)
May these prayers and meditations be received by You, O Lord. Take them and bind them to your will. This is the time of Diwali or Deepawali, a Hindu festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and some Buddhists in the northern hemisphere in the fall. We meditate on the spiritual nature of the victory of […]
A Prayer for a Divided World: The UN Assembly, La Palma’s Volcano, and Haitians at the Border (September 23, 2021)
Source of love and life, there are so many in need of your tender loving care. We uplift to you in prayer all who need your healing embrace in the fragile and hurting world this day. Christ, you said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” This peace is one deeply […]
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 […]
Jesus Is Risen: An Easter Prayer Amid Grief in Brazil, India, and Tanzania (April 1, 2021)
At the last minute I substituted for the scheduled writer, and found myself thinking how little different our current world situation is from that of the first Easter. The same uncertainties, political. military, social and civil unrest, and divisions were being played out, while families and communities struggled to live and raise future generations while […]
A Great and Awful Time: Prayers for Venice’s Floods, Ebola in DR Congo, and Violence in Gaza (November 13, 2019)
Great justice-seeker of the universe, You know that we live in a great and awful time. You have opened our minds to the secrets of nature, but record flooding in Venice, Italy, and raging fires from the United States to Australia, give us reason to pause about having the power of sub-atomic particles placed into […]
Precious Lord, Take My Hand: A Prayer for a Melting Glacier and a Warming Ocean (September 26, 2019)
Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, and worn. Precious Lord, there are times when the news of the world – your world – seems only to abuse and abase us, when it seems indeed to assault us. When a large clump of the Mont […]
Lighten the Darkness Where We Are: Prayers After El Paso and Dayton, for Kabul and Kashmir (August 8, 2019)
‘Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him on those who hope in his steadfast love..’ ~ Ps 33:18 ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen….. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what […]
Grant Us Wisdom, Grant Us Courage: Prayers on Tiananmen, D-Day, and Protests in Nicaragua and Sudan (June 6, 2019)
“God of grace and God of glory on thy people pour thy power… Grant us wisdom grant us courage for the living of these days.” (Hymn, Harry Emerson Fosdick) Holy God, we sing our hymn of faith with faith, sometimes in the spirit of the modern proverb to “fake it ‘till we make it”. Our […]
Like a Refiner’s Fire: A Prayer of Repentance for a Freezing and Burning World (January 31, 2019)
But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present […]