Christmas Words of Assurance

As you gather with your loved ones this year, or pause to remember those you are missing most at this time, know that you are surrounded by a wider cloud of witnesses: your wider church family. Held together in God’s arms and encircled by love, may you feel God’s presence in this Holy Season. May […]

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Prayer for the Beginning of Advent — Mary Luti, USA

You give us Advent, Lord, and we are grateful and glad to abide in your time, urgent, yet measured, imagining life. You give us Advent, Lord, and we are grateful and glad to watch by your light, candid, yet hidden, sharp as a truth. You give us Advent, Lord, and we are grateful and glad […]

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Prayers for South America — World Council of Churches Prayer Cycle

We pray for Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, especially for the Programme of Ecumenical Accompaniment in Colombia which works to support communities affected by the Colombian conflict between government and the FARC rebels.  We pray for the farmers of the Finca Alemania co-operative and their children also affected by the current political situation.  Amen. The Ecumenical Prayer Cycle […]

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Isaiah 61, Prayer — Christian Aid, UK

O Christ, you lived as an ordinary man not in style but simply, yet still you caused uproar, and questions everywhere; you drew the expectations of hungry crowds, and brought buried conflicts to the light. May we, who are sometimes swayed by the crowd’s approval, and who often avoid conflict for fear of its cost […]

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Prayer for the New Year — Alfred Lord Tennyson, UK

In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson British Poet Laureate, 1850 Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.   Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The […]

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Before beginning work, psalm — Edward Hayes

From Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, Fr. Edward Hayes To You, O Divine One, from whose hands comes the work of creation, so artfully designed, I pray that this work I am about to do may be done in companionship with you. May the work that I will soon begin sing praise to you, as songbirds […]

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