As we gather before you, O Lord of heaven, and are gathered by your Spirit to your word, we count it a privilege to hallow your name above all others—to call you Holy, Other, Sacred. And so we give you thanks for this time and space to worship you. We come to this time awed to heaven in our hearts, yet bearing in our memories the matters of earth. From the six days of ministry now behind us, we fashion these prayers for your entire world. Your have heard our praises, now hear our intercessions.
We do pray that your kingdom will come, especially in places around the globe where the kingdoms at hand are unjust, unbalanced, unsympathetic to the call to justice and mercy. In Greece and Malaysia and the Sudan and Hong Kong and every other troubled place this week—and in our places as well—may your peaceable kingdom come, and quickly. As it is in heaven, in the space of your infinite light and love, so it may it be on earth.
We do pray that you would be generous with your daily bread around the world, both the bread the builds up the body and the bread that nourishes the soul. We pray for every hungry place—hungry for food, hungry for justice, hungry for good news, and we pray for the peculiar hunger in our own lives as well.
We pray for human relationships around the world, relations both great and small. Wherever there are broken bonds, old wounds, deep channels of vengeance, raise up voices to announce the news of your forgiveness and the possibility it brings for forgiving others, and teach us, O Lord, how to be a forgiven/forgiving people.
We pray for the church around the world—wherever folks gather under the name of Jesus, and seek to walk in his way. May none of your servants be lead into temptation, and may your Spirit deliver from evil all who are encumbered by sin or sorrow.
These intercessions we bring with us this day, and we offer them in the name of the one to whom belongs the kingdom, the power, and the glory, today and forevermore.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
