World in Prayer- October 23, 2014
God of creation, God of healing, God of all people everywhere,
prayer comes with difficulty this day.
Words seem somehow so inadequate to express the confusion…the anger…the fear
which seems to fill hearts and minds of people in all parts of your world.
What comes to the surface are feelings…voiceless emotions which struggle to find
expression in ways both meaningful and genuine…
sometimes in a shriek of frustration, sometimes only in a whisper of anguish.
But the promise, the assuredness, the certainty is that each one of these words and
feelings, dreams and frustrations- spoken and unspoken- are surely heard and felt and
understood by you.
And so today, beyond our words, we feel and pray for
- the peoples of West Africa, threatened by the Ebola virus…silence
- the people of Canada in the wake of unexplained violence in the capital…silence
- the victims of violence of every kind…silence
- the disenfranchised and disappointed…silence
- those in pain and in the throes of deep grief…silence
- those without food and those who have far too much…silence
- those who are alone and forgotten…silence
- those who are in prisons- those forged by human hands and those of their own making…silence
- those for whom war is an ever-present reality…silence
- those being born and those dying this day…silence
And out of our sense of helplessness and frustration, we pray:
Violence, war, hunger, slavery, homelessness- O Lord, why don’t you deliver us? O Lord, why do you hide your face?
O LORD, WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE YOU? WHY DON’T YOU COME DOWN AND SAVE US? CAN’T YOU SEE YOUR PEOPLE SUFFERING? CAN’T YOU HEAR THEIR CRIES OF PAIN AND LONELINESS?
(Pause for silence)
Or, Lord, could it be that you are already here?
CHRIST, YOU ARE ALREADY HERE. WE ARE YOUR BODY- WE ARE YOUR EARS AND EYES AND HANDS AND FEET.
CHRIST, UNITE US. HELP US TO WORK FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE IN YOUR DIVIDED, SUFFERING WORLD. AMEN.
(This last section by Neil Paynter in Holy Ground from Wild Goose Publications.)
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