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 April 3 – 9: Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore
Where families are fractured by domestic upheavals,
and children forced onto the streets to fight for survival,
where more resources are spent on arms and destruction
and less attention paid to sickness and starvation:
Come, Holy Spirit
heal our wounds
renew the whole creation!
Where the acquisition of things has become an obsession
and the worth of human beings is measured by their possessions,
where our air, trees and seas are besieged by pollution
and purblind mercenary greed threatens our environment:
Come, Holy Spirit
heal our wounds
renew the whole creation!
Where countries are split apart by communalism and racism
and innocent blood is spilt by wanton acts of terrorism,
where internecine warfare sets nation against nation
and a nuclear holocaust looms ominous on our horizon:
Come, Holy Spirit
heal our wounds
Renew the whole creation!
(© Cecil Rajendra, Malaysia. WPCU 1999 p.24.)
Percentage of the population of these countries living below the national poverty line:
Brunei: Not available
Malaysia: 1.7
Singapore: Not available
Source: World Bank World Development Indicators as found in the 2016 Hunger Report.
Prayer is a central part of Bread for the World’s work. Learn more about how you can get involved with prayer at Bread.
