Dear Heavenly Father,
Thank you for our relative safety here in Birmingham. Although individual families are facing hardship, the general level of wellbeing is strong and there is a lot of love and resilience in the community as a whole. Thank you for secure homes and schools, and for parks and gardens where people can enjoy the outdoors without fear. Thank you for the summer weather, the green spaces and the freedom for now from heating bills and confined indoor spaces.
Although we recognise that we are blessed in many ways, we also have needs which we want to ask you to help with. The Bible tells us that we should ask you when we have worries and then trust you to help us. We aren’t always very good at trusting you to help or even recognising when you do help. Please strengthen our faith to ask, to believe and to see your work amongst us.
Please help us to develop the work of the church here, looking after the local community, demonstrating love and inclusivity, meeting needs and celebrating joys. We pray that those who are homeless would receive shelter, those who are hungry would be fed with wholesome food and that those who are lonely would be befriended. We ask for reconciliation where there is discord and for gainful employment where there is redundancy. We ask also that the people who are sick or injured would be healed and that those who have reached the end of their time on earth would be prepared to join you with contentment and peace. We ask that the bereaved would be comforted with your very real and unmistakable presence. And Lord, as each of us sees your answers to prayer, may we share our experience with others so that we might all be strengthened by each other.
Turning to the wider nation, Lord we ask for healing in our government and financial institutions. Thank you for the democratic systems we have, which eventually reveal serious wrongdoing and expel those who break the rules and abuse the privilege of their office. Please give us wise, humble and just leaders who seek office to serve the community not themselves. Restore our credibility on the world and make the UK a nation which is synonymous with justice, honesty and integrity. Make us again a nation which is a world leader in protecting its vulnerable, educating its children, caring for its sick and valuing people and events with a wisdom and appreciation that goes beyond economics.
As for the world, Father, we see so much suffering and we earnestly beg you to relieve it. Please bless the organisations which are trying, in your name, to bring peace and hope where there is famine and war and poverty and devastation. Please give resources and vision, protection and inspiration to all your people who are offering emergency relief, education, technological training or advocacy for the poorer nations of the world. Please protect the climate and the poor from corrupt businesses or governments. Stop the greedy pursuit of profit that brushes aside the needs of the poor and condemns whole communities to endless poverty and early death. The Bible says that you are angry about these things. Show us how to vote, shop and navigate social media to lessen the profits of evil and instead to let justice roll like a river, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Amen