While we enter Lent in confessing our own faults, and those of the church, it is right too that we should bring to mind those who need our prayers at this time.
Prayer: The World at root is good
O God, as we look at your world
we can come close to despair.
When we think of the harm done to children
through exploitation. poverty and neglect;
when we think of the subjugation and humiliation of women;
when we think of gross and growing inequality,
the corruption and distortion of truth,
gratuitous violence and cruelty;
a great cry of anguish and anger goes up to you.
O God, we can come close to despair.
Yet, gracious God, the world at root is good,
for you hold it in being.
And the world is good,
for you thought it worth dying for.
So we pray for the world to come to its senses
and see itself without illusion.
Expose the deceit and evasion,
the hidden self-interest,
the self-deception and collusion.
Send the searing light af your truth, O God.
May we see the seeds in ourselves
of the ugly fruit we condemn in others.
Let us not mask our own sin in spurious superiority.
And as we journey
into your painful, relentless, saving truth,
grant that we may hold fast to you
who holds us through all things
Richard Harries
taken from the URC Prayer Handbook 2012
© The United Reformed Church
Used with permission
We pray for these and for those known to us, whose concerns are on our heart in silence together.
Reflect in silence for a short period
Lord, in your mercy:
Hear our prayer.
Amen.