Lord, teach us how to pray, and help us to pray now.
God our mother, fight for us
Fight for our fellow people in Yemen. So many people are starving and grieving and under threat every day. Dealing with our own crisis, the UK has drastically cut the funding it is providing. Could this be the wrong decision? If so, we pray for it to be reversed.
Fight for our fellow people in Ethiopia. We grieve for the hundreds of people massacred by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in Axum, and for everyone affected by the atrocities committed by both sides. We cry out for truth to be told, and to be clear, when we see lies everywhere.
We acknowledge the truth that the people of Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Mozambique and everywhere are your beautiful children, worthy of love and safety and protection. Fight for us.
God our mother, provide for us
We thank you for the return to school, and pray that the timing is right. We thank you that some people have been able to visit their precious loved ones in care homes. Please let that be safe, and able to continue. We pray for healing of damaged minds and relationships caused by separation and isolation.
We would love it, God our mother, if there were no more COVID waves, and we could see and embrace each other from now on.
We thank you for so many vaccinations. We pray for safe and effective vaccination to continue here, and to be available all across the world. We thank you for the work of UNICEF and others to try and achieve that, and we pray for the money, and politics, needed to get vaccinations to everyone.
God our mother, defend us
Defend us against being overwhelmed by grief. Provide us friends and a way to be with them.
Defend us against being paralysed by fear. Focus our minds on your love, and what you are doing. Give us the help we need at the hardest times.
Defend us against exhaustion. We can’t live on bread alone – give us rest and companionship.
Defend us against loneliness. Unlock our minds, and provide friends.
Defend us against sickness. Give us mercy.
Prompt us to help in your work: give us the courage and imagination to see what you are doing. Let us join you in the defence.
God our mother, teach us
As the prospect of being allowed to do more becomes more real, we face the question “what am I supposed to do?” For people who have been stuck unable to do anything, as well as those whose work has been occupying all available time, we have been exposed by the COVID crisis for thinking “I am what I do.”
What are we? Are we machines for doing good, whose works have been jammed by a stubborn spanner? Or can we see something different in ourselves? Are we intricate creations, made and treasured by you? Are we little parts of this amazing humanity you have made? Are we animals who bumble around participating in an overwhelmingly beautiful process of creation and destruction, of death and new life?
If we were all these things, how would it affect what we do? Or is that the wrong question?
We cry when we are sad, and we dance when we are happy, and we laugh when we don’t know what we are. Can we rest in your strong arms?
God our mother, we are yours.