The following prayer was written and offered at worship where I was preaching this morning. Members of the congregation have friends and work colleagues currently living in Cairo.
Prayer for Egypt
Creator God, by whose love everything exists,
Gracious God by whose mercy we live and move and have our being,
God of Israel, Egypt and the nations,
Hear our prayers for our troubled world.
For two weeks we have watched events in Cairo,
Watching thousands of people crying out for change,
Faces anxious, angry, pleading for support;
faces bruised and bleeding,
voices crying out their aspirations for freedom,
their hunger for a more just society,
Some words are too easily take for granted,
living in the relative security of this country –
Justice, freedom, peace, safety;
and there are those experiences that demonstrate
the dangers of their opposites –
injustice, oppression, conflict, violence.
Lord in your world, amongst the nations,
Let justice roll down like waters,
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Sung Response
From dark despair to hope,
from fear to trust in God,
from hate to love, from war to peace,
still lead us on dear Lord.
…
Creator God, Gracious God,
God of Israel and the nations;
We pray for the kind of peace
which is not the capitulation of peoples hopes,
nor the silencing of freedom’s cries.
When the nations are in tumult
our prayers can too easily become our asking you
to bless our amateur political solutions,
as if you act within the tiny parameters of our wisdom.
God of peace who brought again the Lord Jesus from the dead,
into this situation of anger and violence,
move by your Spirit in peace and reconciliation;
restrain the forces of evil,
may military force protect rather than attack the people,
and bring forth peace, justice freedom
and the birth of new hopes,
not only for Egypt but for all the peoples of the Middle East.
Lord in your world, amongst the nations,
Let justice roll down like waters,
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Sung Response
From dark despair to hope,
from fear to trust in God,
from hate to love, from war to peace,
still lead us on dear Lord.
Leave a Reply