World Day of Prayer
I faced east, praying for Elizabeth in Liberia, West Africa. Since we had parted at the Monrovia airport, Elizabeth was steadily in my broken heart. The World Council of Churches had sent us as “Living Letters” to visit Liberia to communicate that “your family, the church is with you. Remembering you. Praying. Working with you.”
In the room, gathered for prayer in upstate New York, our guide asked us to allow God to raise in us prayers for people for whom we were most concerned and brokenhearted. As we became aware of whom to pray for, we turned in their direction and allowed the grace of Christ to flow through our hearts and hands as an arc of light to fill and surround them. The prayer was for God’s presence to fill those for whom we prayed with the complete knowledge and experience of God’s promise, “You are mine!”
I closed my eyes to better see Elizabeth, standing among one hundred war orphans in Liberia — a country in chaotic postwar conditions. As I held out my hands, praying arcs of Christ’s light across time and space, I saw Elizabeth’s face soften with the peace that passes all understanding and tears of release pour from her eyes into Jesus’ embrace of her spirit.
The guide of the prayer asked us to return our hands to our sides while seeing the person for whom we were praying raise his or her hands and send prayers, like arcs of Christ’s light, God’s transforming grace, to us — filling, surrounding, calming, inspiring, awakening us.
The whole room of us seemed to gasp with surprise, not only because we began to feel fully aware of God’s presence but because of who was now praying for us! Those for whom we were most heartbroken and worried were praying for us through the power and unity of the Spirit.
—Rev. Ashley Seaman, pastor, The Threshold New Church Development and North Presbyterian Church, Denver, Colorado
PC(USA) General Assembly Staff
Gloria Davis, BOP
Gloria Davis, GAC
Kathleen Delahanty, GAC
On this World Day of Prayer, may we all pray in the directions through which God has moved us to be in relationship. And may we receive the surprise of the Spirit, who inspires people whom we know to be most in need of prayer to actually pray for us. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen.
Ps. 22, 148 Ps. 105, 130
Deut. 10:12–22
Heb. 4:11–16; John 3:22–36
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