Local

Join in with the Canberra Region Presbytery in prayer for our Defence Force Chaplaincy

• We give thanks for those who serve in Australia’s defence forces.
• We pray for God’s continued blessing of and through defence chaplains.
• We pray for those this ANZAC day who remember loved ones, however that memory meets them.
• We pray for God’s peace to reign in our nations and in our world.

National

This week we join with the Uniting Church in Australia in prayer for

• The friends and family of George Floyd and those seeking racial justice in the US and here in Australia.
• All those who continue to suffer the trauma of war. We pray for peace.
• Australians and New Zealanders who have and continue to serve in our Defence Forces, their families and those who walk alongside them.
• An end to the human rights crisis in the Philippines.
• Our church partners responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Global

Join in with the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Prayer Cycle, this week we pray for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia

Intercessions:

We are thankful for:

• the long history of Christianity in these lands
• Christians and Muslims who have witnessed to their faith during long years of repression and persecution
• positive developments these countries have undergone since the end of the Soviet era
• those who pursue peace and reconciliation in the face of old suspicions and animosities.

We pray for:

• greater respect for the human rights of all the peoples living in these countries
• just changes for those living in situations of poverty and discrimination
• the healing of past wrongs and distorted memories of what has occurred
• a prophetic witness of the churches in relation to new challenges
• the Georgian Orthodox Church, that it may rediscover a rich relationship with the family of churches worldwide.

Continue to pray with the Church worldwide with the WCC Prayer resources.

https://vimeo.com/452462748

https://vimeo.com/445249388

These are contentious times, Author of Life.
We are constantly wrestling with something.
We wrestle with each other:
over opposing points of view, and their varied interpretations,
our differing experiences, or lack thereof,
over how to mend the rips and tears in the fabric of our lives,
who will or should stand in the gap.

We wrestle with ourselves:
our competing interests, obligations, time constraints,
our doubts and fears,
our cans and shoulds, our wants and needs.

And we wrestle with you, Holy One.
We wrestle with your Word –
with what it says, and what it means.
Preferring Holy Certainty to Holy Mystery,
we chafe against your inscrutable ways.
There is already too much uncertainty in these pandemic days.

We don’t like it.

Equating the wrestling with our most negative
perceptions of conflict, we seek to avoid it at all costs.

Forgive us, Holy One.
In so doing, we miss possibility; we short-circuit hope.

An integral part of discernment, it is in the wrestling
that we discover what we truly believe, what really matters,
where clarity, understanding, and positive change are birthed.

It is where we find you.

Cleanse and renew us, Author of Life.
Put a right spirit within us.
Replace our fear with tenacious faith, and stubborn, defiant hope.

May we choose, like our ancestor Jacob –
to stay present; to keep wrestling,
not letting go until your blessing is recognized and received.

A Prayer of Confession, based in Genesis 32, from Kathy Swaar