Prayers to launch the Autumn 2017 season of prayer

To get the Northern Prayerhouse under way we re-post two prayers from last year.

 

Dave Andrews' Reflection -

at Together Lancashire we take this prayer particularly to heart, and repeat it often and loudly!

 

I dream of a world

in which all the resources of the earth

will be shared equally

between all the people of the earth,

so that even the most disadvantaged

will be able to meet their basic needs

with dignity and joy.

 

I dream of a great society of small communities

co-operating to practise

personal, social, economic, cultural and political

integrity and harmony.

 

I dream of vibrant neighbourhoods

where people relate to one another

genuinely as good neighbours.

 

I dream of people developing

networks of friendship

in which the private pain

they carry deep down

is allowed to surface and is shared

in an atmosphere

of mutual acceptance and respect.

 

I dream of people

understanding the difficulties they have in common,

discerning the problems, discovering the solutions

and working together for personal growth and social change

according to the visionary agenda of Jesus of Nazareth.

 

And I dream of every church in every locality          

acting as a catalyst to make this dream come true.

 

 

Compassionate Community Work, Dave Andrews (2006)

 

 

A wonderful prayer written in 1551,

This was probably written by Bishop Hugh Latimer at a time of economic crisis and the enclosure of common land. 

 

It pulls no punches in the way it talks about landlords who exploit the vulnerable…"

 

We heartily pray thee to send thy holy spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwelling-places of the earth, that they, remembering themselves to be thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their. houses and lands, nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes, after the manner of covetous worldlings . . . but so behave themselves in letting out their tenements, lands and pastures, that after this life they may be received into everlasting dwelling places.".. 

 

Maybe we should pray like that today.