World Prayers for December 27 – January 2: Stateless people and migrants
Bread for the World believes prayer is central to the work of ending hunger by 2030. Hunger happens in every corner of the world. In this blog series, we will provide a prayer for a different group of countries each week and their efforts to end hunger.
This prayer series will follow the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle, a list compiled by the World Council of Churches that enables Christians around the world to journey in prayer through every region of the world, affirming our solidarity with Christians all over the world, brothers and sisters living in diverse situations, experiencing their challenges and sharing their gifts.
We will especially be lifting up in prayer the challenges related to hunger and poverty that the people of each week’s countries face. In prayer, God’s story and our own story connect—and we and the world are transformed. In a prayer common to all of us—the Lord’s Prayer/the Our Father—we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” This line from this prayer can also be a prayer for the end of hunger.
We invite you to join Bread in our prayers for the world’s countries to end hunger. And we encourage you to share with us your prayers for the featured countries of the week or for the end of hunger in general.
For the week of December 27 – January 2: Stateless people and migrants
Hunger will die
We, a wandering people,
journey on, looking for refuge.
Our fellow peoples
do not understand our anguish.
Our children are foreigners,
always hungry for bread.
Hunger will die,
when we all, industrious as ants,
planting potatoes,
shall dance for joy.
Hunger will die,
when the red maize shall flourish
on mother earth,
when the custard apples
will make the soul of our children sweet,
when we shall all dream
in a vast expanse of green farmland,
when we all accept one another,
and, conversing together,
become an everlasting garden.
(The author is a member of the Christian Community of Displaced Persons, at the Peruvian Art Workshop, 1996. In: Stormy seas we brave © 1998 WCC, p. 107)
In 2014, there were 19.5 million refugees and an estimated 10 million stateless people around the world, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
Prayer is a central part of Bread for the World’s work. Learn more about how you can get involved with prayer at Bread.
Photo: A young Syrian refugee girl in Lebanon shows a basket that she learn how to make and decorate at a UNICEF vocational training session supported by UK aid. Russell Watkins/UK Department for International Development.
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