Prayer for Australia

A Prayer for the People, Animals and Land of Australia, by United Church of Canada Moderator Richard Bott. Copied below, or read on the UCC website.

We pray for gentle rains,
and no wind;
we pray for cooling skies,
and water in abundance;
we pray for the burning land,
we pray for the four legged,
and the winged,
for the koala and the kangaroo,
and all of their neighbours;
we pray for the people who are trapped,
for the people who have lost their homes,
for the firefighters and the first responders,
for the exhausted and the tapped out,
we pray for Australia,
from east, to south, to west, to north,
and all the places in between.

In this world of changed and changing climate, God,
we ask that you would help us
to help those who are in immediate danger;
may we use what we have to help and to heal -
then call us to repent of all the ways
we continue to make this world
a place of death, rather than life.

Help us, O God... because we
don't seem to be able
to do it on our own.

In Christ's name,
on the wings of the Holy Spirit,
we pray.

Amen.

—A prayer in response to the Australia wildfires by the Right Rev. Richard Bott.

January 3, 2020