World In Prayer

From Sara Armstrong

"When I needed a neighbor, were you there?" ~ Sydney Carter

"Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language it is to say.  'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours'. A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed." (1) Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu 

"Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: 

So many images, Lord, are flooding through my mind from the news this week.

• People burned out of their homes and communities for the second time within a few days in Victoria, Australia.
• Others flooded in Queensland, Australia.
• Thousands of Syrian refugees in UNHCR refugee camps in Jordan with thousands more waiting to flee the carnage in Syria.
• A young newly married man in England, unexpectedly made redundant when his retail chain employer went into receivership, found dead in woods.
• People protesting in their thousands in India over the abuse and sexual assaults so prevalent on women.
• Homeless people sleeping in cardboard boxes in so many of our towns and cities across the world.
• Young children abandoned in so many countries in Africa and South America and elsewhere trying to survive on the streets without education, love and protection except from each other.
• In Libya and Mali hostages and ordinary people attacked by fundamentalist militants with hate in their hearts.
• The pictures crowd each other out forming a shocking and at times overwhelmingly depressing mosaic of suffering, pain and hopelessness.

Lord, on the road to Calvary and on the Cross you took on the weight of evil and hatred with implacable Love. Teach us anew daily of the annealing and transforming power of love in the face of the most abject horror and evil. You who are Love, help us to love even the unlovely and help us know the reality that none of us and nothing is ever beyond the transforming power of love.

Other images come into focus:

• Thousands gathering for the second inauguration of President Barack Obama calling for all Americans to come together for the common good, but are we willing to listen and hear those who think and feel differently from us?
• A young, slight girl in Somalia, carrying her skeletally thin younger brother to a feeding station.
• So many disparate people across the globe uniting via their computers to stand together to take on issues of justice and harmful practices for so many who individually do not have access themselves to power and influence.  Together they are achieving changes in policy and action of even governments and multinational corporations.
• So many community groups working together to care and provide opportunities for those on the edges of our societies. Love in action rather than doctrinaire words being spouted or tweeted.
• The lady in front of me who spent so much time explaining with gentleness and humor the intricacies of releasing a shopping cart to a confused elderly gentleman at the local grocery store reminding me how unimportant my egotistic notions of being busy and time pressured are in the real scale of things. Later when I speak to her in the store and thank her for reminding me by her actions of what it is to be caring and human, I discover that on this bitterly cold day she is out buying groceries for an elderly neighbor.

Lord God, may the heat and transforming power of such loving actions fill our hearts and minds as we make often small choices in the course of our day so that as drops of hatred spread out ripples far and wide, the even more powerful ripples of loving actions and attitudes will cascade out giving life to giver and receiver and changing our communities, locally, nationally and internationally.

Heavenly Father, creator of each one of us, be close to those who suffer, are alone, frightened, in danger, without hope. As I kneel before you, let my brothers and sisters in need be with me receiving the touch of life, love and light in whatever darkness we find ourselves. Bind us as one in you.  Apart we are so ulnerable and weak. Together we are united and share our strengths and joys as well as our pain and sorrows.

Lord make us one, in You, in Love.

AMEN

(1) No Future Without Forgiveness: A Personal Overview of South Africa's Truth

and Reconciliation Commission , Desmond Tutu, C 2000.

World in Prayer is a ministry of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist

Lodi, California, USA, and is written by a team of writers representing different denominations throughout the U.S., Canada and Great Britain.

Write to us at worldinprayer@aol.com