Prayer for Peace

Valerie Sooter Kirkwood 

O Lord,

We bend in our hands

in prayer

Hands that tend

The earth

The dove,

The living stream

Hands that mend

The cloth,

The heart,

The broken dream

Hands that fend

For truth,

For grace,

For cause unseen

Make strong our hands

that blend

the task

with peace.

Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Gil Porter

O, creator of our being,

The one who loves the smallest, busy black ant, and the graceful, bulky blue whale, and who loves us– each one–in our uncomprehending unconcern, and in our heart filled overflowing and joyful acknowledgment.

Increase our awareness of each other and all your creation. In our tentative touching of life to life, help our responsiveness and awareness of the warmth of loving concern and supporting sensitivity.

May we allow room for each one to be. To be the precious one, we know we are in your sight, and in your all-pervading, surrounding presence.

We find the peace of wholeness of our life, our neighbor’s life, our place in the land and community where we have our calling. Peace with your creatures and especially your people is our calling today–peace and wholeness for all. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Eternal God of love,

We are struck with the woeful things we humans have done to one another, from the conviction of being right. More than 100 million innocent people have lost their lives during the century because nations went to war to prove that they were right.

The world you gave us to live in has become an armed camp. Now, even one more nation claims the right to become a maker of nuclear weapons. Billions of people around the world anxiously stay in their homes, after dark, rather than go out and risk, becoming victims of random violence, or even death.

So we come to this place of hope, to find a balm of peace in your presence. We gather to invest a few moments of time in the quest for inner peace and courage. Your son, Jesus Christ, showed us the power of love over hatred and indifference. He rose from the dead on wings of compassion. We, too, would rise from the grip of fear and apathy and helplessness, empowered by the spirit of peace, the thirst for justice, and the bonds of love for your world, and all its peoples.

Dwell within each heart in this place of worship. Make of us a family united in our resolve to create, day by day, a more peaceful and just climate within ourselves and in our world. Strengthen our every action with the creative force of redemptive, forgiving love. Make us one with you in the cause of peace, justice, and hope. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, the prince of peace. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Linda Shaull

Indwelling Spirit, teach me to forgive myself and free my mind to hear your voice. Move me to ask for forgiveness when I have offended someone. Open my eyes to the forgiveness I must give to those who have offended me.

Give me the courage to reach out to those in need of a friend. Make me a good listener to strangers who may need just an encouraging word, or an arm around their shoulder for comfort. Allow me to shake the hand of a person different from me without fear and say, “Welcome.”

Help me to listen to the small cries of children who are hungry or thirsty. Grant me hearing from my heart rather than my ears. Stir me to ask, “What can I do to help that child?” when I hear on the news about starving children. Give me the understanding to know that the problem is not too big, one child at a time. Let me be the one to enthusiastically sell others on their ability to help one child, so together we can make a difference for a whole community.

I know Lord, that peace is not possible without You as the overseer. Nor is peace possible if the basic needs of people remain unfulfilled. Thank You, Lord, for giving us the vision of peace. With help of your Holy Spirit may we have the commitment needed for that peace.

In Jesus’s most holy name. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Jeri Shumate

Divine origin of life, by your hand we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Through you, we are fashioned as emotional, passionate beings. By you, we know joy and sorrow.

Sometimes, God, our emotions, cause intense and profound pain. Something or someone wounds us, and we feel our hearts tearing in anguish. The pain is so great we close ourselves off, desperate to keep from pouring our hearts out of the hole of our pain.

Carry us in these hours of darkness, O God, so we may grant ourselves time to heal our wounds. Sustain us so that we will risk staying open for as long as it takes to clean all the poison out of our souls. Guide us to healers and friends who will support us as we return to emotional balance and health.

Remind us that when we face and own the complete depths of our anger, sorrow and bitterness, we make ourselves available to the sweetest and most is ecstatic of emotions — joy, hope, and love.

As you guide and sustain us, oh God, we will learn the peace and freshness of emotional well-being. Through Christ’s love. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Linda Shaull

Lord, show me the way to bring peace to this troubled community that I live in. Awaken the concern in my soul, that I might not stand by unaware of my surroundings. Let me shout my disapproval of the violence and drugs through compassion. Give me the courage to listen to people in their times of confusion. Help me to assist them in their search for answers to make wise decisions. Show me the way to be a good friend.

Remind us to pray continually for those in other countries who live in the midst of everyday violence and depression. Open our eyes to other ways of promoting peace. We feel there is no way for us to help because of the distance between our countries, but we know prayer changes things. Let us pray and listen for your voice to guide us to new possibilities.

Fashion us into peacemakers. Let our labors begin today in our own communities. In Christ name and for peace. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Lois Archer

Many of your sons and daughters, God, live by wooded hills, and rolling, fields, by the music of rivers, lakes, oceans, or the noisy symphony of the city. They are educated and well fed. They have purpose in their lives and they can celebrate their existence, and for this, we give thanks.

But many of your people, God, live with desecration of their lands, with hunger, poverty, and disease. They live in the shadow of greed, cruelty, domination, and destruction. You cry out for the liberation of your oppressed people.

Creator, God, we cry out with you. We cry out for justice and order, for equity and sanity. We cry out for the truth and knowledge, for reconciliation and healing of the spirit.

On our knees, we pray for the release of your healing goodness to empower men and women of goodwill everywhere to rise up and stand against the evil that enslaves those in the wounded places of this earth.

We pray that ignorance and superstition, apathy and aimlessness will be overcome by your glory—by intelligence, love, and compassion. We pray that enlightened people will rise up and join all forces for good.

May the earnest prayers of all who unite at this moment rise in power, as we pray for peace and goodwill to all who dwell on the earth.

We call upon the holy name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Sharon, J Nesbitt 

Steadfast and loving One,

The way of peace seems an impossibility when we focus on the turmoil of the world.

But we accept Jesus’s promise of peace, not worldly, but inner peace of mind and soul, the peace that brings wholeness and healing into our brokenness and fragmentation.

Through your son, we experience reconciliation and peace with You. We receive empowerment through the Holy Spirit to become channels through which inner peace is spread into the lives we touch daily. May this peace of wholeness and unity flow in ever-widening circles to encompass all nations and peoples, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Henry Fielding

Lover of peace:

At this moment throughout the world there are millions of people who do not recognize your presence. May your spirit resonate within their beings and cause them to come to a recognition of your love and your desire for all humanity to be united in the bond of your spirit.

Our creator and sustainer, so often you are hidden from us, not because you have removed yourself, but because our spiritual eyes are closed. Grant us, we pray, the capacity to look within ourselves to find your presence.

May we be strengthened as we discover your presence in our neighbors and in the very fabric of the world you have created. In our selfishness we think of the world as “ours,” but in our better moments we know that we are only visitors, living briefly on this planet which preceded us and which will continue after we have gone. Help us to treat with respect all aspects of your creation. In doing this, we will become united with each other, with you, and with your world.

We pray for individuals, families, communities, and nations separated from the presence of strength and peace. May each discover and release the essence of the living God and become whole. May they truly discover what it is to be holy and to view the entire universe as sacred.

May each of us respond in love to the stirrings of your empowering presence within us, that we may each truly be an ambassador of peace. Amen.

Prayer for Peace

Wallace B. Smith

Gracious God, at this season of the year when, for us gathered here, new life begins to show itself--and all the wonders of nature proclaim the joy of your creation, we pause to give thanks for the abundance of your blessings, and at the same time confess our failure to live up to the high purposes you have set for us.

You have planted the seed of peace in our hearts, and yet have had to water it with our own tears when we have so carelessly let it lie parched and neglected. Hear our prayer this day that we may nurture with more care the possibilities you have created in us.

This very day we commemorate the fearful time when peace, in the form of your Son, was nailed to a cross and lifted up for our sakes. Forgive us for the tendency we have to keep repeating that act of violence in our rejection of those different from us, those in need, those challenging our comfortable notions and ways of thinking.

As we seek forgiveness for the times we have sought for mere calm rather than a just peace, we pray for strength to be closer in our thoughts and actions to Him whose life and death and resurrection revealed to us the possibilities of a life lived truly for your peace. It is in his name we pray. Amen.