World in Prayer

Sharing in God’s loving compassion for all

The Prince of Peace in a Weary World: A Christmas Prayer for Refugees and the Poor (December 26, 2019)

As we approach the end of another year, we tend to reflect and look back over the last year or decade but unless this informs our choices and behaviours going forward it is in danger of being an empty and futile activity. So many have expressed frustration, anger or disconnectedness with the political process in […]

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 […]

Be Gentle With Us: Prayers for the Kurds, Typhoon Hagibis, and Lebanon’s Wildfires (October 17, 2019)

Be gentle with us, O Lover of Souls. Be gentle with us, for surely in this fractured and fracturing world, that above all is what we need: To (re)learn to be gentle with ourselves. To be gentle with each other. To be gentle with our planet. Be gentle with those – especially with those – […]

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 […]

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 […]

Awaken in Us Compassion: Prayers for Midwest Floods, Cyclone Fani, and Ebola Health Workers (May 9, 2019)

Oh God, you who are always listening to us; you who hear the bird singing in the topmost branch against the blue, blue sky; you who know of the sobbing deep in the rubble after a bombing or the utterings of the newly-born. You, who are the heart of compassion, who gave your son Jesus […]

Call to Us Now: Prayers After the Sri Lanka Easter Bombings and the Philippines Earthquake (April 25, 2019)

Holy One, Your Name is above all names, it is so high that we cannot attain it, yet still we seek it. And when we cannot find you, when we do not understand what is happening, when our hearts quake with fear and our spirits tremble with unknowing, when we stumble and search and seek […]

We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest: Prayers for Syria, Haiti, and Survivors of Abuse (February 21, 2019)

[Italics are quotes from “Ella’s Song” by Sweet Honey in the Rock.] We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. Almighty God, we pray for all who fear for their lives around the globe, living in war-torn areas, living in fear of terrorism, and living under oppressive governments, including: the civilians in Baghuz, Syria […]

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 […]