Speak up Stop Discrimination – Human Rights Day 2010

December 10 is Human Rights Day.

From the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study comes this prayer from Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our Father, who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find, forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life. Draw us from base content and set our eyes on far-off goals. Keep us to tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying; make us sure of the good we cannot see and of the hidden good in the world. Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us and our hearts to the loveliness men hide from us because we do not try to understand them. Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new. Amen.

Quoted in Blanche Wiesen Cook’s Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884–1933 (New York: Viking, 1992), pp. 151–152.

A reflection for Human Rights Day.

Find worship resources for Human Rights Day.

Read about defenders of human rights against discrimination.