Prayer: Silence
June 08, 2025Lord, please teach us how to pray, and help us to pray now.
It feels like we've run out of words to say about the appalling violence we are witnessing in Israel and Palestine: man-made starvation, kidnapping, murder and military action against civilians. Even as we see the hatred-based violence yet again breaking out in other countries, including the murders in the US this week, it's hard to find anything to ask of you, Lord. It's obvious what we want: peace and safety for everyone. Respect for everyone. Basic food and medicine that allow life for everyone.
As we acknowledge that there are no adequate words, I would like to invite you to be silent, to remember and respect the people killed and injured as part of the violence in Palestine and Israel. Lord, we acknowledge that you breathed life into the bodies of our fellow humans, even as those bodies are broken. We remember them, and we are silent in respect for them. As we perhaps listen to our children here making sound within our silence, we remember the children who are lost.
Lord we offer our silence as a token of our grief, and as a request for you to intervene.
We thank you for the hope we can find when we remember that you made us, and you love us - all of us - as we are.
Amen