A prayer for Pentecost
Everlasting and ever-living God,
we give thanks for your gracious gift of the Holy Spirit.
Open us anew to the blessings of your Spirit.
May your Spirit unite the races and nations on earth to live together as you intend.
May your Spirit guide us into paths of peace.
May your Spirit lead us to seek justice.
May your Spirit inspire us to care wisely for your creation
and share the bounties of your gifts well so that all your children have enough.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
— Presbyterian Peacemaking Program
A prayer for women who have shaped us
Holy God, we celebrate partnership between all of God's people in the world. We are blessed when we come together as people of different ages and stages of faith in order to live out God's call for us. This month, we lift up to You those who are involved in intergenerational partnership of all kinds; we are especially mindful of and give You thanks for the gifts that young adults provide the world and the church. We praise You for people of all ages who live out their callings each day as they connect with each other in life, service and mission. We are especially mindful of your mothering presence in the world. Thank you, for mothers of all kinds, and for women who have shaped and formed us. We pray especially for those who are in need of comfort in times of grief and celebrate the life of those who have gone before us. All of these things, Lord, we pray in your holy and gracious name. Amen.
— Kristen Glass, Director for Young Adult Ministry for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and member of the Ecumenical Young Adult Ministries Team of the National Council of Churches (adapted)
A note for Mother’s Day
Julia Ward Howe, who served as a nurse during the Civil War, played a key role in instituting Mother’s Day in the United States. In 1870, she started a crusade to create a Mother’s Day as a Day for Peace. Her original proclamation read:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says ‘Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.’
Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Source: The Peace Alliance. The 214th General Assembly (2002) called for "the creation of a U.S. Department of Peace at the cabinet level, in order to provide focused government efforts to promote peacemaking."
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