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 States, where a fragile ceasefire over the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed, and strikes have resumed for more than a week. We hold before you the offshore workers on the Kuwait Oil Company rig, the border guards at three posts struck without warning, and every family now bracing for what comes next.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We lift up the waters of the Red Sea, where Yemeni Houthi forces threaten a new blockade, and the shipping lanes that carry food and medicine to people who did not choose this war. Prince of Peace, still these waters as you stilled the sea in Galilee.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

And yet, O God, we do not forget to rejoice. We give you thanks for the handshake at the White House this week, Presidents Aoun and Trump, after seventeen years of silence between their nations, reaching for something steadier than war. We thank you for the villages in southern Lebanon beginning, however slowly, to see Israeli forces withdraw. Plant that fragile beginning deep, Lord, and let it hold.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We hold in your care the people of Gaza, living now beside a barrier that cuts their land in two, and we pray for the day when walls give way to open roads.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We watch with hope the people of India, whose satire has grown into a nation’s honest question to its leaders, and we pray for every people, in every land, who ask their government to see them and to hear them.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

And for the ordinary joys that keep us human, we thank you too: for Spain‘s champions, for a Wimbledon, London UK tennis crowd on its feet, for every small delight that reminded us this week that you made us for gladness as surely as for grief.

Holy One, teach us to hold sorrow and joy together, as you do, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, until your peace is the only news left to report.

Amen.