FW: Prayer for nation

Subject: Prayer for nation

 

Pray for the peace of the city, may peace be within your homes and security on your streets.

 

Will you join me please in praying for the peace of our cities, and especially for the people of Tottenham?

 

Pray for the family and friends of Mark Duggan as they absorb the shock of his violent and premature death - pray that the circumstances of his death may become clear for everyone to see and that those who loved him will have confidence that justice has been done.

 

Pray for everyone who has been traumatised by the events of the weekend:

            the policemen who have been injured, and their families

            those who have lost homes and businesses

            those who have lost their sense of living in a friendly and safe place.

 

Pray for fire fighters and policemen, for protection from the violence around  them, and for those needing to devise new strategies to cope with the breakdown  of law and order.

 

Pray for our police, that there will be among them exceptional men and women, able to

understand the hopes and fears of all the different individuals and groups they deal with, able to uphold the law with wisdom, integrity and discretion, able to step over prejudice, their own and other people's.

 

Pray for entrepreneurs and business people with drive and energy to create sustainable,

worthwhile jobs for folk living in Tottenham, and across our country.

 

Pray for mothers and fathers to stand steady and faithful at the heart of their families, and offer the disciplines of love, truth and example. May they model how to seek justice without violence.

 

Pray for the young, that they will listen to the voices calling them to live courageously and freely, and will turn away from those influences calling them to alienation and victimhood.

 

Pray for the churches in our cities, in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Croydon, and especially at High Road, Tottenham, and its minister Peter George - may they be communities of hope and reconciliation, outposts of God's Kingdom that is coming.

Pray for the future when resources may be scarce, jobs and homes hard to come by. May we be those who demonstrate a genuine concern for our neighbours, the salt that resists the tendency to care only for ourselves, the light that reveals all the many dimensions of well being that do not depend on affluence.

 

For the sake of my family and my friends I will say, "peace be within you". Amen.

 

Pat Took, President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain