Prayers for Others

Listen or read, as you wish.

These are our prayers for others on this Day of Pentecost 2020

As we offer our prayers for the world and for ourselves, we will share in brief times of silence, allowing us to reflect on the needs of others and our own experiences. As we reflect, it may be that we become aware of God speaking into that silence to assist us to understand our world and our lives in new ways.

We remember creation, breathed into by God’s Holy Spirit – Places of beauty and brilliance,
places of grandeur and spectacle, places of extravagant diversity.

We pray, creating God, for places damaged and degraded for people scaping a living from land made fruitless by human greed.

Help us to live sparingly and to care for creation.
Gracious God hear our prayer.

We remember humanity, breathed into by God’s Holy Spirit:
People of beauty and brilliance … people of gifts and grace, people of extravagant diversity.

We remember today those whose lives have been impacted by COVID-19 ….
Those who have lost their employment, or who have had their hours reduced and now have new pressures to add into their lives …
Those who have lost their homes …
Those who are now expected to do more … working extra hours in essential roles, or who find they cannot take a break from their work and find themselves exhausted.
Those who are concerned about returning to work, and fearful of what they will find and be expected to do … and those who find that their employment conditions have changed, with benefits reduced or withdrawn …
Those whose lives are diminished because they live with either their own uncertainty, or the uncertainty of others close to them.

Help us to be welcoming, helpful, and more aware of those things that together impact on our own mental well-being and the mental well-being of those around us.

Gracious God hear our prayer.

We remember the Church, breathed into life by God’s Holy Spirit: a community of beauty and brilliance … a community of love and compassion … a community of extravagant diversity ….

We pray inspiring God, for denominations working out how to be one family, offering effective witness to your love in the world;
For churches with projects that offer fresh hope to those struggling with the pressures of life, and for people who feel the challenge to be understood, accepted and loved.

Gracious God help us to be willing to hear the Spirit speaking, to be willing to change ourselves, and to be inspired to change the world.

In the name of Jesus, our Christ, we pray.

Amen

An ‘Abba’ Prayer for Pentecost

Loving presence, luminous in all creation,
hallowed be your name.
Thy kin-dom come.

May we reflect on earth the yielding perfection of the heavens.
Help us to receive an illuminated measure from the earth this day.

Forgive us when we trespass against others, human and other than human,
as we forgive others who trespass against us.
Keep us in the path of wisdom when we are tempted to take the selfish path.

May it be your rule we follow, your power we exercise, and your radiance that allures.

May this be the truth that guides our lives, the ground from which our futures will grow, until we meet again.

Acknowledgement: Bruce Sanguin, Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos, 2007