26/5/11 - English

We pray for participants in World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel, a World Council of Churches initiative taking place May 29-June 4 that encourages prayer, education, and advocacy in support of a just peace for all in Palestine and Israel. As people of faith around the world gather next week in prayer and action, we pray that God will change the hearts of those who maintain the occupation, filling them with a desire for justice and peace, and that all those who continue to suffer from oppression and violence will find reprieve. We also join Sabeel in prayer for the peace of Jerusalem: http://sabeel.org/news.php?eventid=206 .

As the Palestinian schools and universities finish another school year this week and enter the summer holidays, we pray for the wellbeing of all the children and young adults who are the promise of the future. We especially pray for all the students graduating this year; may God’s blessing and peace be upon them and help guide them through the next stages in life.

This weekend, May 28 and 29, a joint Sabeel Jerusalem/Nazareth Young Adult program will bring together youth from the Galilee, Jerusalem and the West Bank to commemorate the Nakba in the Galilee. As they join Christian and Muslim youth from the area on Saturday to clean the church and mosque in the Palestinian village of al-Bassa that was depopulated in 1948 and to visit and worship on Sunday in the village of Kufr Yasif, we pray that this time of remembering the past nakba, or catastrophe, will help all of us work to end the ongoing nakba.

We pray for all of those who pray with us each week through the Wave of Prayer in North America, that they would be encouraged and strengthened to work from their own countries for peace with justice for all people. Especially as the Canadian government continues strictly pro-Israel rhetoric and after Obama’s and Netanyahu’s meetings with AIPAC and the US Congress, we pray for the increasingly important grassroots movements and advocacy in North America.

With the Prayer Cycle of the World Council of Churches, we pray for: Botswana, Zimbabwe