Praying for Brindle: Praying for Our World
Thank you for joining us. Wednesday 20th May 2020, is Brindle St. James’ first ever virtual prayer day! We are very pleased to have you involved, and we hope that you embrace with the presence of God through your time in prayer today, be that for five minutes or a full fifteen hours!
We hope that this time today might encourage you to think about your daily prayer life, so we have put together some resources that might help you. There is absolutely no obligation for you to use these resources, but we thought that it might be a useful, so that those who might want some inspiration can find some.
One of the reasons why we pray is to spend time in the presence of God. Thus, it is important that your prayer life works for you! Not every style of prayer works equally well for every person, so in committing time in personal prayer, it may as well be through a style that allows you to experience a genuine encounter with God.
We hope that the below resources might give you some ideas for your time of prayer. Why not try out one of them? If you like, you could share your favourite with others by posting a comment on our Facebook or Twitter page to let us know which method you tried and how you found it. You can also share your prayer by tying a card to the magnolia tree next to the church door or leaving your prayer stone there. Others would be delighted to hear from you and see your prayers!
Prayer liturgies:
Church of England Daily Prayer: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/daily-prayer
Northumbria Community Daily Prayer: https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/how-to-use-daily-office/
The Community of Aidan and Hilda: https://www.aidanandhilda.org.uk/prayer-examples.php
Irish Jesuits’ Daily Prayer: https://www.sacredspace.ie/daily-prayer
Prayer styles:
Lectio Divina (‘Holy Reading’): https://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-what-how-why-of-prayer/praying-with-scripture/
Contemplative Prayer: https://www.belmontabbey.org.uk/new-contemplative-prayer
Ideas for intercessions:
You may want to spend some time praying for your own intentions. That is fine – God loves us and is passionately interested in our lives, our joys, and our worries. Some ideas might be:
- Our families and friends.
- Our parish family, our wider community, and our world.
- Our schools; the children who attend those schools and the staff who work at them.
- For our religious leaders.
- For the end of Covid-19; for those key workers who are working so hard for us all; for world governments who are working to keep their countries going; for scientists who are working on a vaccine…
- For those struggling with other health conditions at this time.
- For those who are struggling with bereavement at this time.
- For those struggling with isolation.
- For those struggling with hunger, poverty, and housing.
- For the recovery of our precious creation so that we may pass it on to future generations.
- For the forgiveness of a sin which might be weighing on our minds.
- Ourselves (we often forget to pray for ourselves!)