O Holy One, We think we are listening to you. We are really practicing listening to you. We have a long way to go — to do your will. To love ourselves. To love our neighbor. To Love You. We get distracted — so much is going on around us and worldwide. We have so […]
May Our Groans Be Prayer: For Gun Violence, Hunger in Afghanistan and Yemen, and Nepal (June 2, 2022)
God, there are hardly any words for these times. You promise that when we are in these unfathomable places Your very Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words. We need that now, as we groan through our exhausted bodies and tattered hearts. May our groans be prayer, be release for all we feel without […]
We Need You Now: A Prayer After the Uvalde School Shooting and the Buffalo Supermarket Massacre (May 26, 2022)
God, We need you now. We needed you yesterday. We need you today. We need you tomorrow. We need you now. We need you to do something. To stop the brutal unfathomable violence that is surfacing in every part of our world. We need you to change the hearts of lawmakers. We need you to […]
Mourning Buffalo and Lifting Our Eyes: Prayers After a Racist Massacre, and for Iraq’s Sandstorms (May 19, 2022)
Loving and ever-present God, we come before you this week bringing all that we are seeking your presence, your love, your wisdom, and your grace. We do not have to look far to see the brokenness and pain in the world, from health struggles to concerns about our finances, many of us bring fears and […]
How Long That Road Is: A Prayer for Shireen Abu Akleh, Journalists Killed, and Teachers (May 12, 2022)
How long that road is. But, for all the time the journey has taken, how we have needed every second of it in order to learn what the road passes by. – Dag Hammarskjold* We pray. The newspaper lies in a plastic bag in the driveway. The news shows up on our phone or TV […]
Give Us Eyes to See: Prayers for Journalists Under Threat, the Darien Gap, and Las Vegas (October 7, 2021)
Holy One, Help us in our struggle of claiming to know when we do not know, of disrespecting others wellbeing and thinking we do not share the same world, drive down the same streets, share the harvest, hospital beds and soldier against disasters and pandemics. Help each of us to follow Christ’s path of compassion. […]
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, […]
Lord Have Mercy: A Prayer for Dijon Kizzee, Health Care Cut Short, and Words That Wound (September 3, 2020)
We pray Lord, We pray some of us on our knees, some hands folded, palms to heart, forehead to ground, some raising a sign in protest, some gritting their teeth and eyes tight shut and others lighting a candle. We pray for your mercy in these tumultuous times, in these times where every shooting raises […]
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. […]
I Have Called You by Name: Prayers for Hong Kong, Iraq’s Protesters, and the Turkey Syria Border (October 10, 2019)
[Yay, our website is finally back up! If you subscribe to the email edition of World in Prayer, we apologize that you’re getting last week’s prayers again. Unfortunately, we have no way of telling the email service to skip a post that we’ve already sent out manually.] But now thus says the Lord, he who […]