08/28/2026
World News in Prayer
Dear God of all the people who live on the earth, our weeks hold both joys and tragedies that are sometimes near us and sometimes what seems like a world away. We all live and move and have our being alongside our neighbors – those who share our time zones, even the schools for our children and markets for our food; those who experience their tomorrow while we have yet to wake up to a new day; those in close proximity to our latitude and longitude and those on the other side of the globe. No matter where we are, O God, you assure us that we are in your sight. You know each of our names, each of our hearts, each of our hopes and dreams.
O God, who loves us in sunshine and shadow, we come to you with our prayers today.
No matter the distress and sorrow that is burdening us, we know that millions of our brothers and sisters are living with hardship we can never imagine. We turn to you, Caring Parent of us all, because we believe that you clearly receive the love that we bring to you, in our words and in our silence.
“These days feel unbearably heavy. We are living inside grief layered upon grief—violence, injustice, fear, betrayal, the slow erosion of trust. It would be easy to forget who we are under that weight. It would be understandable to shrink.” (Cameron Trimble, “Piloting Faith,” January 12, 2016)
Hear today what we can say in words. Catch our tears in your hands when we cannot shape our prayers into clear thoughts. We believe that kindness to our neighbors is the true path to justice, peace, and shalom between your children. You place us in a world where none of us survives alone. Please teach us, Loving God, what is ours to do for others. Be with us when we lose our way.
Lord, hear our prayer for our neighbors.
Hear our prayers for the relationship between Canada and the United States. The rivers of North America cross borders. The mountains cross borders. Products and transportation cross borders. Tourists and family members cross borders. May those from Canada and those from the United States see each other’s presence as a gift rather than a chance for leverage; may each government seek neighbors, not enemies. We pray for a relationship between us that does not seek submission or domination. We do not pray for one nation to exert power over another but for a relationship that allows working through disagreements.
Lord, hear our prayers for our neighbors.
We pray for the vulnerable population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hear our prayers for people who have the Ebola virus and for those who have family members who have died in this outbreak that has reached 5,515 confirmed cases of infection and killed 2,642 people. Last Sunday Pope Leo called for international action to help contain the epidemic, which is now the largest Ebola outbreak in the DRC’s history.
Lord, hear our prayers for our neighbors.
Hear our prayers for those in the Himalayas. An enormous flood tore a devastating path through a mountain valley on the border between Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, smashing buildings and sweeping away people who were trying to flee, even in a giant torrent of mud, water, and ice. At least 160 people were killed and hundreds more, including foreign tourists, were missing in the flood, which snapped at least nineteen bridges into pieces and quickly washed them miles down the river. The floodwaters also swallowed people who tried to run but were overtaken by the storm’s speed and force.
Lord, hear our prayers for our neighbors.
Hear our prayer for medical needs in Gaza. Hospitals across the Gaza Strip face a severe medical oxygen shortage that threatens the lives of critically ill patients and premature babies. The devastated healthcare system cannot reach the vulnerable who live in camps for displaced persons where people reside, even though they are forced to live with a lack of sanitation, insufficient potable water, and constant exposure to unbearable heat or cold, conditions that make difficult conditions even worse. Hundreds of people are forced to live in tents in schoolyards or other locations where there is no supervision of any kind. Nineteen of thirty-two hospitals are even partly functioning.
Lord, hear our prayers for our neighbors.
Hear our prayers for those grieving a spirited, loving singer, Dolly Parton, who died in the United States this week. Cameron Trimble offered these lines from a prayer on her website, “Piloting Faith,” in thanks for Dolly’s generous legacy:
Help us notice what we have been given
and become less afraid to give it away.
May we plant joy where there is weariness,
possibility where there is discouragement,
welcome where there is loneliness,
and kindness wherever the world has grown hard.
When our own lives are finished,
may something good still be growing because we were here.
Lord, hear our prayers, asking that we, too, may do something beautiful and generous with our lives.
May it be so. Amen.
