March 1, 2019
All God’s Creation Is Very Good
A heri grontapu di Gado meki bun doro, dóro!
World Day of Prayer is a global ecumenical movement led by Christian women who welcome all to join in prayer and action for peace and justice. This year, World Day of Prayer is celebrated Friday, March 1. The annual worship service is created by an invited writer country. In 2018, the service was created by the World Day of Prayer Committee of Suriname. With Genesis 1:1–31 as their guiding Scripture, the women of Suriname reminded us that we are all caretakers of God’s good creation. They wrote, “What God creates is always good! In the first five days, all that is needed is made ready until humankind is created. We are created in God’s image. We are worthy just because God loves us, but the creator holds us accountable for how we care for the environment and all the beings on earth. We can’t be careless or wasteful. It is time to seriously think about what we have done to God’s creation.”
World Day of Prayer’s guiding principles say “prayer is rooted in listening to God and to one another.” The urgent public and private need to care for God’s creation grows as more is understood about the impact of global climate change, which is expressed through stories in the service. Last year, women’s voices introduced multicultural and multiethnic Suriname communities, told stories of conservation and living well with creation, and raised concerns about the increasing abuse of human beings, God’s creatures and the environment. They reminded participants that we “forget that we are only borrowing the earth,” and called us “to commit ourselves to being better stewards of God’s creation and caretakers of our neighbors with Jesus Christ as our example.”
World Day of Prayer 2019 also calls participants to commit to a cooler earth, a place where all of creation can prosper now and into the future.
To learn more about World Day of Prayer and order resources, visit worlddayofprayer.net.
Susan Jackson Dowd, Executive Director of Presbyterian Women, Treasurer of the World Day of Prayer International Committee and served for 20 years on the World Day of Prayer USA Committee
Today’s Focus: World Day of Prayer
Let us join in prayer for:
PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Kim Long, PMA
Patricia Longfellow, PW
Let us pray:
Creator of peace, heal the conflicts that divide us, and bring us back into that unity of love that reflects your nature, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.