Holy One, Source of all peoples, you call us to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep. Hear us now, as we bring you the week’s sorrows and its small, stubborn joys. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. We weep with the people of Iran, Kuwait, and the Gulf […]
Swords into Plowshares: Prayers for Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, and All Who Seek Refuge (July 16, 2026)
Holy One, Creator of every nation and every people, Breath that moved over the waters before the dawn of creation, we come before you carrying a world that is beautiful and wounded in equal measure. Your prophets dreamed of a day when swords would become plowshares and nations would learn war no more. Yet this […]
Thanksgivings, Concerns, and Celebrations: Prayers for Ukraine, Kenya, and a World in Heat (July 20, 2023)
Mother God, we come to you with thanksgivings. We are grateful to be loved by You. We are grateful for hands to hold, for kindness, and for grace. We are grateful for sunshine, rain, and rainbows. We are grateful for the farmers and laborers who give us our daily bread. We are grateful for forgiveness. […]
An Alphabet of Prayer: From Aged Adults to Zoom Fatigue in a Pandemic Year (August 5, 2021)
Sustaining God, we offer an alphabetical litany to You. Please shine Your light on: Aged adults who feel isolated in a pandemic… Birthing persons… Cancelations… Delta and other variants of COVID-19 which are highly transmissible and more virulent than the original… Ethiopia, where a civil war rages… Food pantries… Grocery store employees and all other […]
Bread of Life: Prayers for Simone Biles, Climate Disasters, and Conflict in Tigray (July 29, 2021)
O Christ, you once said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35) Today we yearn for your abundant life. We hunger for the bread of heaven to sustain us on our journey to find you. Reveal yourself […]
Peace Like an Unpredictable Flower: Prayers for Gaza, India’s COVID Crisis, and Kabul (May 20, 2021)
A note to our email subscribers: If you are getting this prayer for a second time, it means the problem preventing our email service from “grabbing” the current prayer from our website is, in fact, finally fixed! (We’ve been fighting a massive malware invasion, which caused last week’s edition to email twice, and had been […]
Lazy, Hazy Days: Prayers for Families Separated, the Tham Luang Cave and the Saddleworth Moor Fires (June 28, 2018)
Dear Lord, In the Northern Hemisphere, we expectantly “roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer…”* but there is a parent and grandparent duty. We plan exciting activities for little ones in our care, for camps and vacations and community programs. In this season of school year endings we watch and wait for exam […]
Breathe and Behold: Prayers for Cape Town and Flint’s Water, Syria’s Siege, and Winter Olympians (February 8, 2018)
Holy One, We keep scrolling through the news, forever flicking from catastrophe to exhilaration to trauma, over and over and over again. Make us stop. Force us to take a break. Teach us how to breathe. Show us how to behold–rather than barrel through–your world. We pray that we might take a break and breathe […]
The True Riches: Prayers After Storm Earl, Macedonia’s Floods, and Ethiopia’s Protests (August 11, 2016)
Loving God, Ancient of Days, so often we lift our prayers to you driven by our emotions. Frightened by the evident dangers- natural and man-made- which the world faces, we cry out clumsily like little children. Enraged by the evident injustices the world faces, we strike out verbally to establish our own opposition. Squelched by […]
Praise and Thanksgiving: Gratitude Amid Ebola in Guinea and Mine Deaths in China (November 27, 2014)
“Praise and thanksgiving, Father we offer, for all things living you have made good” Hymn by Albert F.Bayly Father at the start of a new Christian year we offer our thanksgiving for all the mercies we have received over the past years. Despite the snow and difficult traveling conditions for many in Canada and the […]