DAILY PRAYER: Matins, 9/25/15

GOD OF EARTH and earth's many pilgrims, we pray today for the many who've lost their lives on Hajj this week, outside of Mecca.  Seeking simply to worship and adore you, like so many of us, they have died in the midst of terrible tragedy and suffering.  We believe, with our many Muslim friends, in the power of faith and the promises you make; so we pray for their many journeys home, into the sweet and eternal embrace of your love.  Bless so many grieving loved ones with courage, kindness and faith; and empower whole communities to create spaces of sadness, healing and peace.  

We pray too for victims of terror in a Yemeni mosque yesterday, and ask your holy intervention to turn the hearts of the violent to peace and constructive ideas.  Bind up the broken lives of mourning families, tend to the wounds of those badly injured, and inspire in your many peoples visions of shared feasts and just economics and peace.

9/11 Prayers

As people of the Risen Lord, we dedicate today's prayers to our Abrahamic sisters and brothers: to Muslim friends and Jewish friends, to Orthodox and Catholic and Protestant friends.  In our varied ways, we make pilgrimage to find you, looking for hope, discovering strength, renewing commitments to sacrifice and service.  Open in us the same space you opened in Abraham: a space for hospitality, wonder, courage and transformation.  Let us not cling to our own versions of truth, but restlessly pray for a higher calling and holy purpose.  May humility be our language and grace our way, through a world of such sweet beauty and such overwhelming danger.

All this, and so much more, we pray in the name of Jesus, who walks by our side.  Amen.