Prayer
Loving and embracing God,
Through your son Jesus, you renew all things and offer abundant life.
In these challenging times, we have been reminded that your grace has been sufficient for us.
You challenge us to look beyond our own difficulties to those whose needs are greater than ours, whose cries for justice are louder than ours.
Creator God,
All of creation is groaning. There is fear, disconnect and anguish, as profit, as greed drives us only to address the symptoms, while the planet and all creatures that call it home are dying from this lifestyle disease.
You remind us that a renewal is required to address the loneliness of spirit that the world feels, the hunger of the human heart that material gain cannot satisfy.
Amidst the pain and suffering of so many you offer hope of a renewed world, a reweaving of the divine mat on which all creation sits together, each a sacred strand of your design that was very good.
Help us O Lord, journey into a profound, a deeper relationship with both you as Creator and all your Creation.
To touch the soil and tend to the earth.
To protect the ocean and move gently upon it.
To sing a new Lord’s song and work together so that everything that has breath: the trees and the seas that make oxygen, and the creatures that breathe it to live – everything that has breath – praise the Lord!
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Amen.
Rev. James Bhagwan,
General secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches
This prayer was also published as part of the publication Voices of Lament, Hope and Courage.
