Prayer
TAKEN FROM WORLD IN PRAYER April 2024 19th April 2024
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“When you take on the confusion and the violence and you refine them, purify them into something new, you are doing what in the vocabulary of faith we call consecrating your chaos. To consecrate is to make holy, to put it into service for good. In consecrating chaos, you engage it, tame it, name it, take what seemed out of control and charge it with a duty.” Otis Moss III, Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times
Source of Strength, Wisdom, and Hope, these are chaotic times. Today we focus our prayers for the religious and spiritual leaders everywhere, that they may invite You into the chaos, and open themselves to unexpected answers and solutions. Amen.
We honor religious and spiritual leaders who are consecrating their chaos:
Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman, and a leader of Brazil’s Yanomami people, who asked for papal backing for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s efforts to reverse decades of exploitation of the Amazon and better protect its Indigenous peoples.
Bless Davi and his holy vision to consecrate the chaos.
A delegation of 24 religious leaders under the support of Indian Minorities Foundation met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said they wanted to send out the message of interfaith unity in India to the outside world. The delegation represented Sikh, Jain, Christian and Parsi communities.
Bless the Indian Minorities Foundation as they focus on interfaith unity.
The New Jersey (USA) Coalition of Religious Leaders (Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh) gather regularly to engage in dialogue and action to advocate for social change. The Coalition subscribes to a community-centered theology, rooted in love, that harnesses the power of interfaith collaboration and fellowship to become a chorus for justice.
Bless the New Jersey Coalition of Religious Leaders as they lift up the gifts of one another, rooted in love.
To celebrate the International Women’s Day 2024, the embassies of Australia, France and the Netherlands, all woman-led, sponsored “Women Sowing Seeds of Peace and Cultivating Encounter,” a conference of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu female faith leaders. In her presentation, ordained missionary and theologian Maeve Louise Heaney challenged Catholics to reconsider their idea of God and the Holy Spirit as neither male nor female.
Bless women faith leaders as they continue to challenge us to think more expansively.
The leaders of several religious denominations (Orthodox, Anglican, Evangelical, and Pentecostal Churches of the country, as well as the leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities) have joined their voices in a statement to reflect on the growing insecurity facing Chile, particularly given an increase in organized crime and murders.
Bless the religious leaders of Chile as they promote peace.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, (USA), announced a 30-state campaign to “wake the sleeping giant” and mobilize over 15 million poor and low-income voters ahead of the 2024 election. Barber declared it is “time for a resurrection and not an insurrection.” The goal, he said, is for the 85 million Americans in the low-income voting bloc to vote.
Bless the Poor People’s Campaign as they promote the power of a vote.
May your strength be felt by the religious and spiritual leaders of the world. May your abundant love surround them as they engage in the beautiful, hard work you have asked them to do. May the wind carry your whispered message, “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Ps. 46:10) Amen.
April 2024
With Streams of Living Water”
Jesus said “I am the Door”