All God's giants have been weak [people] who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them." - Hudson Taylor
All leadership leaves a legacy.
The coverage of the Britain’s Queen Elizabeth passing at 96 has rightly honored the good of her personal legacy and the hard truths about colonial power over and damage to other peoples, power and damage that benefitted the royal family. This is a prayer that helps us practice praying into the hard tensions with God’s justice as our lens.
Lord, our hearts long for heroes. And our hearts long for justice. Mostly our hearts long for you. In times of public mourning, and public truth telling about legacies, help us to be always soft towards real humans and unflinching towards righting wrongs. Help us to hold the tension, knowing that everything is a mix of freely given grace and the legacy of sin. Help us not to flatten out the truth. We pray for your continued discernment and guidance as we walk paths of decolonization.
The recent flooding in Mississippi has highlighted an ongoing water crisis that is effecting the 82% black community of Jackson Mississippi. The water system in the city of 150,000 has not functioned in years, due to lack of investment in infrastructure upkeep. Residents struggle with intermittent boil-water advisories and high bills for water that is not always safe to drink, even though they are still paying for it. After the floods, the treatment plant failed completely, leaving the city’s residents without water to drink, bathe or even flush toilets.
God, you bestowed clean water to your creation from the beginning.
In Jackson, as in too many places, there is no clean water to drink, or wash with. We pray for systemic solutions to this systemic failure and injustice. May the policy makers not be gatekeepers to water. Provide for families in miraculous ways, God of Living Water.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates suggest that 50 million people - or one out of every 150 people alive - are trapped in forced labour or forced marriages. That is up nearly 10 million on its numbers from five years ago. The pandemic, armed conflicts and climate change driven displacement of people have led to debt and desperation which breeds vulnerability to abuse.
God of liberation,
Protect the most vulnerable from predatory employment promises. Help us all to recognize our roles in creating safe and free places to work, as voters, as consumers and as people of faith in our communities. Be with those who are trapped even now, lead them to freedom in Jesus’ name.
The rampage in early September left 10 dead and another 18 wounded, not including the two accused who also died in the days following. Nine of the deceased victims lived in James Smith Cree Nation, with another in Weldon, Sask., within 20 kilometres of the reserve.
Holy Spirit, Comforter and Guide, we pray for your presence to be known by the victims and their families. Provide for the psychological, physical, financial, spiritual resources needed for healing. May the community continue to come together and may those outside of the community remember to pray. Keep revealing the ways we can help one another heal.
This popular workshop is now available as an online course in Canada and the U.S. Faith in Action is designed to help you grow in five key advocacy areas: research methods, key messages, letter writing, planning talking points, and setting up in-person meetings. Sharing your well-informed opinion can make a real difference on the justice issues that you care about, and can bring about long-term changes to unjust systems. Find the course at learn.crcna.org
Each year the President, in consultation with Congress, sets a refugee admissions goal for the following fiscal year. As we approach the fiscal year 2023 (FY23), we are asking the President to set a goal of 200,000 and urging the President and Congress to invest in rebuilding the United States refugee resettlement program, overcoming bureaucracy and immigration backlogs that make it difficult for the U.S. to welcome any refugees at all. Join us and over 300 ecumenical partners in asking our elected officials to support the restoration of the United States’ commitment to refugees and establish a refugee admissions goal of 200,000 for FY23.
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