Prayer Cycle (11-17 August, 2013): Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia

Intercessions

Give thanks for:

• The wondrous diversity of creation and those who seek to be good stewards.
• Aboriginal and Maori cultures and those who try to preserve the best of them.
• Gum trees and kangaroos, wallabies and kiwi fruit, Aoraki/Mt Cook and Uluru/Ayers Rock.
• Coral reefs and the wonders of life they contain.
• Societies becoming multicultural and learning to be more open to those who are different.
• Lively debate and political wit.

Pray for:

• The rights and lives of Aboriginal peoples, who have lived in Australia for thousands of years.
• The rights of Maori people, who were the original inhabitants of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
• Those who witness to the strength of the Gospel to highly secularized cultures.
• An end to discrimination against refugees and migrants seeking a better, safer life.
• Those who oppose violence and war.

 

 

PRAYER

Greenness

 

Dear God, there are times

when I hear your voice most clearly

in greenness: in the singing of sap,

the conversation of the leaves, the whisperings

of shoot and stem, root, sap and cell,

calling me back to creation

to feel again the freshness of you

running through everything

like a bright emerald current.

God of greenness, you know well my tendency

to fill my life with my own methods of communication.

Thank you for constantly returning me to the simplicity of yours.

Again I experience you in the rejoicing

of bare feet on a damp forest path,

in the wonder of light thrown against

a kaleidoscope of tree ferns,

in the myriad textures of moss-clad trees,

in the shining of you beneath every surface.

Beloved Creator, coming to our greenness

is always a coming home,

a time of peace and grace

as the unimportant in me falls away

and I know again that bright green shoot

of my own beginning

which comes from you

and is one with you,

bright and beautiful God.

(By Joy Cowley, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Published in Aotearoa Psalms: Prayers of a New People by Joy Cowley, Pleroma Christian Books, Otane, H.B. New Zealand.)

 

Prayer of praise

Blessed are you, God of the Universe.
you have created us and given us life.

Blessed are you, God of the planet earth.
You have set our world like a radiant jewel in the heavens,
and filled it with action, beauty, suffering, struggle and hope.

Blessed are you, God of Aotearoa/New Zealand,
in all the peoples who live there,
in all the lessons they have learned,
in all that remains for them to do.

Blessed are you because you need us;
because you make us worthwhile,
because you give us people to love
and work to do
for your universe, for your world and for ourselves.

Source: oikoumene.org