World in Prayer

Sharing in God’s loving compassion for all

Black Lives Matter: A Prayer Against Violence and Modern Slavery (December 4, 2014)

Oh. Dear. God. No.  Not again. I thought I knew what I was going to write for tonight’s prayers. And then I turned on the computer, and read that in the United States, yet another unarmed Black man had been shot, dead, by a police officer. Jesus. I am speechless, beyond shock. Everything I could […]

Praise God Anyway: A Thanksgiving Prayer in a World of Warped Mirrors (November 20, 2014)

God, it’s hard to be grateful.  I remember a book, “Praise God Anyway,” and I hated the idea.  Yet You, Holy God, have allowed me to live enough to know the author was right.  I must try to be grateful anyway. Holy and Loving God, we come to this season of Thanksgiving wanting to: “Count our […]

Thy Will Be Done: Prayers for Ferguson, Ukraine, and Kashmir’s Floods (September 4, 2014)

O God of every tradition, we pray thy will be done. We are assaulted second by second throughout the 24-hour news cycle by words and images that describe so many ways in which it is not done: Nation and would-be nation bargain over beheaded journalists in the Middle East Nation and nation rattle sabers over […]

There Is a Balm in Gilead: A Prayer for Farzana Parveen and the Kidnapped Nigerian Schoolgirls (May 29, 2014)

Go up to Gilead and take balm. — Jeremiah 46:11 “There is a Balm in Gilead” – American Spiritual There is a balm in Gilead To make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead To heal the sin sick soul. Some times I feel discouraged, And think my work’s in vain, But then […]

Expanding the Borders of Our Prayers: For Central African Republic, Ukraine, and a Post-Easter World (May 1, 2014)

God of Easter and beyond, You have dared us to take Your story “from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.”  You have asked us to lay claim to the world in the name of Love, and You are Love.  It is with Your call that we expand the borders of […]