Prayers of the People
Apri119, 1998

Almighty God

Ruler of the Universe
Giver of Life

Now is the time we all come with our crys. You know what each one of us wishes to utter out of our troubled hearts. But we don't know it of each other. Deepen our awareness of each other.
Deepen our knowledge of each other...so that we all know ourselves known. So that we make a common supplication unto you.
We're hurting, we're tired, we're frightened, lonely, left behind. We're trying to be good. We'd like to be responsible. We'd like our love to be without dissimulation. We'd like to repair all the harm we have done.

God In Your Love...Hear Our Prayer

Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. The life we see is Christ, the crucified one, is enormously winsome. But we're not up to it unless he is your idea. Unless you sent him. Unless he is your person, unless you raised him up.
It is the smoking flax of our faith that we most need to be fanned into a flame. That's why we're here. That is why we pray for the church. The one in this place and everywhere else. That we will be to each other the means to believe in order that we might have life in Christ's name.

God in Your Love...Hear our Prayer

Gracious God
In concert with the congregations of the World Council of Churches, we pray for the Church in Brazil. Quench not its smoking flax but fan its Ministry to a flame, as that country faces the call to stewardship of its rain forests and responsibilities for land reform in the face of murderous opposition.

God In Your Love...Hear Our Prayer

Renew and strengthen the commitment to peace in the hearts of the peoples whose lives are engulfed in violence and strife. We've been blessed with a number of hopeful signs lately.

Hear the crys of those engulfed that this frail promise will not fail. Sustain the United Nations Security Council in its watchfulness lest the unrest in Rawanda flair up again.

Speed on the first steps in the dialogue between North and South Korea. Increase the signs of promise for an accord in Cambodia. Affirm the accord wrought by the contesting parties in North Ireland. Breathe life into the peace process in that land so much of the world thinks of as the Holy Land.

God In Your Love...Hear Our Prayer

Now as our Saviour taught us we pray...