WORLD DAY OF PRAYER 2014

(art for the event by Farid Fadel)

 

WORLD DAY OF PRAYER

 

World Day of Prayer is held each year on the first Friday in March.   The day was the idea of Church Women United, an ecumenical Christian group of women who work for justice and peace.  Each year, a women's group from a different part of the world writes a prayer service for the day.   For World Day of Prayer 2014,  women from Egypt prepared the prayer service, with the theme:  "Streams in the Desert." 

 

Some of the background for the day and its theme this year is here for your reflection:

 

Egypt: A place where history flows across every location like the Nile River flows through its land.   A place where history speaks to us calling us to remember our past.    Egypt has been both a place of exile and a place of refuge.    It is a place where streams flow through desert lands bringing with them the fertile nutrients needed for plants, trees, and all forms of life to flourish.    However these streams are not only the physical rivers that we can dip our feet into.

 

In the 2014 service, we are invited to seek the streams of living water which Jesus offers.   We come to sit by a well in Samaria where a woman will meet Jesus and, in meeting him, will meet God.    It was at this well that she was offered the life giving waters that became "in her a spring of water welling up to eternal life."   It is in her meeting that we too are offered this living water.    Come, let us dive into those waters and see what may come of our encounter.

 

We are invited to think about our own lives and where we recognize streams in our own deserts;  places and moments where God is actively at work.   To reflect on times when we, like the Samaritan woman, have gone to the well looking for one thing and then discovered Christ offering us what we never expected.   We will come not only to learn what this spring of living water is,  but how we can,  like the Samaritan woman,  carry it back to our communities.   To see the transformation that can happen when we share our stories of encountering the living God.

So come, drink your fill of the waters that God has to offer.    "We no longer believe just because of what you said;   now we have heard for ourselves..."