Prayer For Our World

Loving God,

We come to You on this day as Your people - built up, yes, but also perhaps feeling beaten down. . .Filled with joy, yes, but also filled with sadness and with questions. . . . We come to you with gratitude for our health and wellbeing, but some of us are also afraid because our health is not what it used to be. . . In this time of prayer, turn us toward You - our True Comfort - and turn us toward one another as a family of faith, that we might demonstrate Your love in human faces and in human touch.

We pray for a world that does not always know that it is loved. We pray for people down the street who are without jobs, without hope. We pray for people who seem a world away - caught up in political protest and turmoil, enslaved in human trafficking, starving in famine. . .

On this day, we especially raise our voices and our concerns for the people of Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia, as they are truly caught in famine and drought, children and parents alike who are suffering and even dying for lack of food and water. Help us to be a part of the very prayers we make. Turn us toward them - Your beloved people - that we might be of aid in ways we can.

On this day, we especially raise our voices and our concerns for our own nation - as politicians fight, sometimes necessarily or at other times, unnecessarily. We pray for our President and leaders in Congress. We pray for all of those who will be affected by their decisions. We are all affected, but on this day, we pray for those who are especially vulnerable - the poor, the sick, the needy, those who long for equal access to resources and education. Turn us toward these people as well, and help us to be a part of the very prayers we make.

We pray for our congregation. For all that is going well and blossoming here, we give You thanks. We pray for all three of our language ministries -- English, Korean, Spanish - that we might be a family of faith together, giving thanks for the multiculturalism that is here, as just a small piece of the beautiful multiculturalism that is found in Your world.

And we pray for those in our midst who are struggling. We are especially mindful of those people who are listed in our bulletin with particular needs. We pray also for those whose names are not listed, but who are known to us in our hearts, in our very lives. In silence, we offer their names to you. . .

We give thanks that they and that we are Your beloved children. As as we inhabit such a posture of privilege, we are bold to pray the prayer that Jesus taught us, saying. . .

Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy Name,

Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our debts,

As we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,

For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and Glory.

Amen.

-A Prayer of the community at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, July 31, 2011