Daily Prayer for Peace
1:00 p.m.
Mauritania
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Call to Prayer
Lighting of Candle
Invitation
Today we will hold up the people of Mauritania in our prayers. Part of French West Africa until independence in 1960, Mauritania has been influenced by Arab as well as African cultures. Crop growing is largely confined to the floodplain of the Sénégal River. Some of the world's richest fishing grounds lie off the coast. The population still largely depends on agriculture and livestock for their livelihood, even though recurring droughts in the 1970s and 1980s forced most nomads and many subsistence farmers into the cities. Opposition parties were legalized and a new constitution approved in 1991. For now, Mauritania remains an autocratic state, and the country continues to experience ethnic tensions.
We greet you in the name of God, our Creator and Guide, who calls us to worship.
Prayer for Peace by Kenneth L. Simpson, Lee's Summit, Missouri
In the midst of lives made rich by your gentle love and constant blessing, we pause this day to again acknowledge our dependence upon you, and to be reminded once more of the grace that calls us to service in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. We praise you for your holiness and thank you for the privilege of receiving your love.
Our limited understanding becomes so obvious as we seek your presence when you are ever beside and within us. We quest for your love when we are loved beyond our ability to acknowledge and respond. We rejoice that we have been summoned to the pursuit of peace in your world, yet war rages within our very being. Petty differences deny us true fellowship in our homes, our families, our communities.
Your patient grace blesses our gatherings. Your loving acceptance of our feeble responses challenges us to renewed commitment to peace in our world. In our better moments we would exhaust our abilities and our treasuries seeking peace for all persons in all nations. In other moments we see the hunger and emptiness in our community.
Strengthen us for the ministries to which you call us. Sustain us in our desires to bring peace and blessing to those who are within our ability to serve. Guide us in the quest to make peace a reality in the lives of all. Through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
Hymn - Soften My Heart (sing 2 times) - Sing a New Song #47
Please join us now, praying the Prayers of the People. During the moments of silence, you are invited to pray silently or meditate.
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
Let us go from this house and be the peacemakers and peacekeepers we are called to be.