Prayer Focus for GA

By Lynn Viale, COLA vice moderator

For the next six months the COLA executive committee is asking all churches to initiate a prayer focus for the upcoming General Assembly (June 21-28, 2008). 

Each month’s focus will relate to one aspect of the GA’s theme: justice, kindness, humility. Included will also be the focus on “the Ministry of Hospitality” which is our role for the Ga.

The hope is that in our worship services, session and deacon meetings, Presbytery meetings and out private prayer times, we will remember to “pray without ceasing” for the General Assembly, that it will be Spirit-breathed, Christ-centered, and God-led.

The General Assembly theme for the 218th General Assembly

• Do justice
• Love kindness
• Walk humbly with your God.               Micah 6:8

Our Responsibility as hosts for the 218th General Assembly

• Practice hospitality.                                   Romans 12:13

Let’s envision a General Assembly where we

• Work together for justice in an unjust world
• Listen to one another with kindness and respect
• Speak of our issues with humility and grace
• Practice the radical hospitality to one another that Christ has freely offered to each of us

Prayer focus for January:  Do Justice

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.  Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.”                             Zechariah 7:9-10

When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous.                                 Proverbs 21:15

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos 5:24

A Prayer for Justice

Loving God, you hold us in your hands for we are all made in your image.

Help us to celebrate our differences.

Help us to use our diversity to share with each other the richness of our many cultures, languages and backgrounds.

Help us to dissolve the barriers of race and work for a just society in which none are despised and discriminated against on the basis of false divisions of race and in which each is valued for their true humanity.

We ask this in the name of Jesus, who saw beyond all human divisions and reached out to the good within each person.

This prayer is found on the PCUSA website from the brochure of Ideas for Action to End Racism published by the Diakonia Council of Churches

PRAYER FOCUS FOR FEBRUARY

PRAYER FOCUS FOR MARCH

PRAYER FOCUS FOR APRIL