While I'm not entirely sure, I think it was Reinhold Niebuhr who recommended that we pray with Scriptures in one hand and a newspaper in the other hand. That's good advice whether or not my memory of its ascription to Niebuhr is correct.Several months ago Louise Heiss, a friend at Faith Lutheran Church, recommended that I subscribe to World News This Week, and I have found this ministry of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist
Lodi, California, USA, both a source of valuable information and a profoundly helpful resource for my prayer life. Here's how it works. Each week a volunteer scours through newspapers and news reports to learn where and how people are suffering from hunger, war, injustice, natural disasters, torture, false imprionment, economic stress, and environmental damage. Then that person writes a prayer and shares it with all of us who subscribe to World News This Week.
Lodi, California, USA, both a source of valuable information and a profoundly helpful resource for my prayer life. Here's how it works. Each week a volunteer scours through newspapers and news reports to learn where and how people are suffering from hunger, war, injustice, natural disasters, torture, false imprionment, economic stress, and environmental damage. Then that person writes a prayer and shares it with all of us who subscribe to World News This Week.
When I receive my weekly notice, I print myself a copy and place it in my prayerbook. Then, when its time for various "other prayers" (confessions, intercessions, thanksgivings, praises) in Morning and Evening Prayer, I pray one or more of the petitions, adding them to my prayers for family and friends. I pray these peitions slowly so that I keep their intent memorably in tact during the day. Admittedly, sometimes I don't know the circumstances surrounding some petitions and therefore find it necesary to do some research, usually right after my World News This We prayer incentives arrive.
You may want to look into subscribing to this service. Here, for example, is what I received this morning, what is now printed and placed in my prayerbook:
We pray for a commitment to life so full that we will not accept the ways of death. We pray to be led more fully by the Spirit. We pray to accept ourselves, and others, as children of God. Not enslaved by fear, but joyfully adopted into a family dedicated to witnessing the reality of life as it ought to be, we pray to live by the realization that Cornel West worded this way: “Indifference to injustice is more insidious than the injustice itself.”
Deliver us from indifference to the prevalence of slavery in the world. Let us not just pray for, but also devote our attention and contribute our resources to, the work of initiatives that combat child prostitution, that pursue liberation for individuals, that advocate for cultural and political change, and that break our hearts. Some say there is more slavery in the world now than at any time in its past. Deliver us from apathy.
Deliver us from indifference to the abuses of imprisonment. As we recall a fifth casualty of suicide among the detainees in Guantánamo, Cuba, let us not forget to mourn the death of a real person, a man from Yemen, a man with a name, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, held since February 2002, untried, allegedly a Taliban fighter. Let us not forget his fellow detainees, the Uighurs, and let us not accept the way journalists were denied information and access both to the suicide and to the protests of the Uighurs.
Deliver us from indifference to the efforts to suppress discussion of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China 20 years ago this week. All the old-fashioned forms of censorship are being supplemented with new efforts to make social networking unavailable. Let us celebrate the creativity, not to mention the courage, of those who would keep the images available. We pray especially for civic organizations in Hong Kong holding a vigil and otherwise noting the anniversary.
Deliver us from indifference to the circumstances of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and her country, Burma. Arouse effective response to the conscription of child soldiers, sexual violence, forced displacement and other violations of international law.
Correct our unwillingness to acknowledge the connection between prosperity and peace. Redouble our efforts to mitigate the damage that economic problems cause, not just for the sake of those who are most badly affected by also for all of us, who eventually suffer the consequences of a poorer world that becomes a more violent world.
Dismantle our preoccupation with simplicity. Grant us grace to understand and to work with the realities of no prevailing power group in Somalia, of no certain path for the swine flu virus, and of ills where we can find no one source of blame.
Finally, we pray you deliver us from indifference to evidence that some lessons are being learned. Brazil is set to show the lowest rate of Amazon deforestation in 20 years. Companies in the U.S. are responding to consumers, federal regulators, employees and environmental watchdogs with better monitoring of carbon emissions and with projects to reduce emissions. We can learn to expect better results when we make better efforts. Too often we come to you in childish ways, but always you respond to us with a wise love. We know that it is a human obligation to care for the world, and, we thank you for your abiding companionship in the effort.
Amen.
Deliver us from indifference to the prevalence of slavery in the world. Let us not just pray for, but also devote our attention and contribute our resources to, the work of initiatives that combat child prostitution, that pursue liberation for individuals, that advocate for cultural and political change, and that break our hearts. Some say there is more slavery in the world now than at any time in its past. Deliver us from apathy.
Deliver us from indifference to the abuses of imprisonment. As we recall a fifth casualty of suicide among the detainees in Guantánamo, Cuba, let us not forget to mourn the death of a real person, a man from Yemen, a man with a name, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, held since February 2002, untried, allegedly a Taliban fighter. Let us not forget his fellow detainees, the Uighurs, and let us not accept the way journalists were denied information and access both to the suicide and to the protests of the Uighurs.
Deliver us from indifference to the efforts to suppress discussion of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China 20 years ago this week. All the old-fashioned forms of censorship are being supplemented with new efforts to make social networking unavailable. Let us celebrate the creativity, not to mention the courage, of those who would keep the images available. We pray especially for civic organizations in Hong Kong holding a vigil and otherwise noting the anniversary.
Deliver us from indifference to the circumstances of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and her country, Burma. Arouse effective response to the conscription of child soldiers, sexual violence, forced displacement and other violations of international law.
Correct our unwillingness to acknowledge the connection between prosperity and peace. Redouble our efforts to mitigate the damage that economic problems cause, not just for the sake of those who are most badly affected by also for all of us, who eventually suffer the consequences of a poorer world that becomes a more violent world.
Dismantle our preoccupation with simplicity. Grant us grace to understand and to work with the realities of no prevailing power group in Somalia, of no certain path for the swine flu virus, and of ills where we can find no one source of blame.
Finally, we pray you deliver us from indifference to evidence that some lessons are being learned. Brazil is set to show the lowest rate of Amazon deforestation in 20 years. Companies in the U.S. are responding to consumers, federal regulators, employees and environmental watchdogs with better monitoring of carbon emissions and with projects to reduce emissions. We can learn to expect better results when we make better efforts. Too often we come to you in childish ways, but always you respond to us with a wise love. We know that it is a human obligation to care for the world, and, we thank you for your abiding companionship in the effort.
Amen.
Image: Pray for the World
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