Prayers - Board of Mission Overseas

Convener: Rev Dr Mark Gray, 1 Old Rectory Park, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 4QA. Tel: (028) 4062 2484
“Credit Where Credit’s Due”
World Development Appeal 2009 — Prayers & Liturgy
Responsive Call to Worship
We are ambassadors of Christ.
Response – Fill our hearts with your love
We are ambassadors of Christ.
Response – Open our hands to share
We are ambassadors of Christ and worship the One who brings Good News to the poor.
Opening Prayer
Hear the invitation of the prophet Isaiah:
Come, let us go up to God’s
holy mountain,
that we may learn to walk
in all God’s ways.
For God will judge between the nations,
And shall decide for many peoples.
And they shall beat their swords
Into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
Let us come before God and learn
God’s ways of peace.
As God’s people we gather.
We may be discouraged,
dismayed, discordant with life.
Let us sit together,
sharing the solace of silence.
Let us possess the peace of God’s presence.
And be wrapped in the warmth
of God’s love.
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Let us be comforted and quieted,
prepared for communion with God
and fellowship with one another
for the sake of His Kingdom and His love for the poor.
Amen.
Prayer of Confession
God of welcome and generosity,
We could do better.
But tangled up in the ways of this world,
We fall short of the standards of your Kingdom.
We could turn the tables on those who play the markets.
We could stockpile generosity and speculate in hope.
We could sell up our shares in selfishness and settle for the dividends of solidarity.
We could build portfolios of justice and an ISA of righteousness.
We could buy shares in trust and believe that a better world is possible.
We could level inequality and share out the wealth that was never ours to hoard.
But we don’t, at least not very often and certainly not enough
For your economy is alien to us, and the way of Jesus hard to follow.
Forgive us, we pray and by the renewing work of the Holy Spirit help us to risk our securities
to find a richer life.
May the percentage of our interest in people rise and may we be the prophets of hope.
Amen.
Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession
Gracious God,
We are so privileged.
We have reaped the benefits of other men and women’s labours – fields which we have not
planted, trees and hedgerows which we have not grown.
We are heirs of agricultural and horticultural skills in animal husbandry and crop cultivation.
We thank You for machinery developed, for advances in technology and for the easy
availability of energy and water.
We thank You for those who built our roads and bridges so painstakingly,
and those who advanced our communication systems. We thank You
for those who designed buildings and those who erected them.
We thank You for the benefits we have gained through our hospitals and schools, for those
who have built up our churches and brought people together in community.
We are so privileged and so comfortable – we have never known dire hunger.
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We ask that we may not be so soaked in ourselves that we fail to respond to the needs of
our brothers and sisters, born into hunger and poverty especially at this time remembering
them and those who seek to relieve their distress, the Meserote Christos Church in Ethiopia,
the Church in Cambodia, the Church of North India in West Bengal, and the Church in Mali.
We pray for all without our privileges and the basic infrastructure which we so often take for
granted.
Response – Lord, hear our prayer
For the materially poor who are even more victims of the credit crunch than us.
Response – Lord, hear our prayer
For all who see before them the devastating effects of deforestation, water depletion and
climate change and fear for their future
Response – Lord, hear our prayer
For all who are vulnerable, widowed and orphaned, bereft of a breadwinner, for all sorely
oppressed.
Response – Lord, hear our prayer
For all victims of people trafficking and of corruption.
Response – Lord, hear our prayer
We thank you for all who work to empower the poor, to build up their self‐confidence, to
teach creative, life‐changing skills through self‐help and adult‐literacy groups.
Help us to realize that we also have a responsibility to be our brother and our sister’s keeper.
Teach us how we can invest our talents and skills to relieve the daily distress of so many as
faithful servants of Him who is still “The Bread of Life”, even Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.
The Sending
Let us now go in peace
To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.
May the Giver of Law and the Word of Grace
The Bread of Life and the Light of the World
Help us to reach out to the poor through Jesus Christ, Our Saviour.
Amen.
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