Prayers for Israel/Palestine, the World and Ourselves

Prayers written by Paul Weller, a member of our Inter Faith Working Group:
 
Lord, we place ourselves before you this morning
And we are conscious that we should not be standing or sitting
We should be on our knees, and even prostrate on the ground
Because our words of prayer whatever they might be cannot suffice for the enormity
Of the things that have happened, are happening and are about to happen
O Lord hear us in our cries of helplessness
 
But hear more, we pray, the cries of horror and grief, of rage and of righteous anger
Coming from the land of promise that for so many has become a land of loss of hope
We pray for Jews in Israel and throughout the world who, today,
Feel great insecurity wherever they are in the world
Who, when they think of their ancestral line, instead of promise, think of the long line
Of pogroms in Czarist Russia, of Shoah in Nazi in Germany,
And now of killing of babies in cold blood before the eyes of their parents
And who have faced those who wish to eradicate not only Israel but also all Jews
And who now fear, wherever in the world they live, for their very existence in this world
 
We pray for Palestinians, Muslim and Christian who, today, ask often in frustrated rage
About why has the world turned its eyes away from decades of occupation
From hundreds of thousands of uprooted people in an ancestral line of refugees
Of denial of their peoplehood and their aspirations for a state of their own
Of the deaths of many over many years and now the deaths of children in remote bombardments
 
We pray for Christians within these societies
For Messianic Christians of Jewish background and for Palestinian Christians in the state of Israel
For Palestinian Christians in the Palestinian authority and also those in Gaza
Lord, we who sit far away have no idea of the choices they face in a deeply fractured environment
For how they might be able to be salt and light, our hearts cry, help them with strength and wisdom
Be to them what we cannot in the additional challenges which they face and we can barely imagine
 
But we also pray for ourselves, that in our geographical distance
We do not allow our very real sense of helplessness to become an excuse to say and do nothing
Help us, we pray, to find the strength in our everyday interactions with everyday people
To find in speech and practice ways of standing for justice and for peace
And to hold to account the authorities in our and all other countries for what now happens.


Please click here for a statement and prayer from our General Secretary

Please click here for a Prayer Guide from the Baptist World Alliance with specific prayer requests.