Back to Top

Justice and Worship

Justice Prayers is a weekly post with 3-5 prayers addressing justice issues from around the world, sent straight to Do Justice subscribers' inboxes every Wednesday. 

Reflect, lament, pray, and incorporate God's ongoing narrative of justice for the vulnerable into your devotional life and congregational worship services.Forward them to your pastor for Sunday's congregational prayer, add them to your church bulletin, print them for use in small groups, or supplement your personal devotions.

See archives from before July 2021 here

A Prayer for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

Annie Pootoogook.

Bella Laboucan-McLean.

Cheyenne Fox.

Jane Bernard.

Therese Labbe.

Advocacy Works: A Poem about Advocacy

Welcome to our Advocacy Works series! Want to see other posts? Sign up here to receive them in your inbox. 

Tags: 

True Worship & Fast: Riffing on Isaiah 58

God is not impressed.

Why, you ask? Allow me paint an evocative picture.

 

Sing song, sing-a-long.

Hands raised to high heaven,

Like the branches of red oaks

Only inches shy of touching the big blue sky.

 

While the world sleeps, the Christian’s alarm clock beeps

It’s Sunday, says the mind as our lips get on their grind

Creating great services, working hard on our performances

and striving even harder to maintain appearances.

 

Tags: 

This Lent, Give up Complacency

Lent might well be the most challenging season in the Christian calendar. Advent is about anticipation of things to come. Christmas and Easter are both celebrations of good news. But Lent? Lent is a season of sacrifice.

No Justice without Anointing

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.” Isaiah 61:1-2

What I Learned from a Full Moon Ceremony

This post, detailing a CRC member’s participation in and appreciation of a full moon ceremony with Ojibway Indigenous people, provoked a lot of discussion at Synod 2017. Some people believed that the post promoted syncretism, inappropriate blending of one religion with another, and worship of a false god, while some people believed that the writer was turning away from Eurocentric expressions of Christianity and choosing to worship the one true God in non-European ways (ie. contextualization).

Litany for the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church

The International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church is usually the second Sunday in November. This year some communities will be commemorating the day on November 6 and some on November 13. Below is a litany to help you remember the persecuted church on whatever day you choose. Visit the Office of Social Justice's religious persecution pages for more worship resources and to learn more about religious persecution around the world.

What we do to the Earth, We do to Ourselves

I had escaped from the concrete jungle one August summer day to be connected with the land once again. Every summer, it is my tradition to harvest medicines for ceremonial and spiritual practices. Being Cree, two of those medicines are sage and sweetgrass. With every medicine I took from the land, I would place tobacco down & offer my prayers. With every prayer, I acknowledged Creator’s masterpiece all around me. With every acknowledgement, I was reminded that I am a mere strand in this web of life. There I was, in the thick of this web of life, in the midst of creation, on the prairies

A Prayer for Love in the Face of Violence

This is an updated version to reflect recent events.

If you’re struggling to know what to say, and how to say it, when addressing the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the shootings of Dallas police officers (Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa) in personal prayer or during Sunday worship, consider using this summary and prayer:

Wrongs to Rights

Nearly 50 authors have contributed to a new, challenging collection of reflections on how churches can engage in this framework of reconciliation. If you are somehow troubled by that history, curious about how Indigenous Christians think about this history and future, or believe it is your personal, Christian, or civic responsibility to work for reconciliation with the peoples who lived in the land before European settlers arrived, you will find in this volume thoughtful, committed contributions from church people on Indigenous rights, the role of the state and the church, what the scriptures say, relationships with the land and the church, and living into our responsibilities together.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Justice and Worship