BIRTHDAY PRAYER FOR PEACE IN SOUTH SUDAN - Adopted from Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Sharing dinner with South Sudanese

The Lord was kind to give our family an extended season in Africa.    Through most of that season Sudan was at war.   Occasionally, South Sudanese would visit our Ugandan church, the Kampala Church of Christ.    Our organization, New Testament Churches of Christ had work in the Kiryandongo Sudanese refugee camp near Hoima.   I had Sudanese students in my classes at Kampala Evangelical School of Theology.

While we were in Rwanda South Sudan became independent.  The war seemed to be over.    Many of us had great hopes for South Sudan.    My business minded friends from Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda were investing.

As we've moved to the USA with a dream to serve the Diaspora I have heard over and over again from Kenyan, Rwanda, Tanzanian, and Ugandan friends, "We must reach to the South Sudanese.   We can not leave them alone."

A few weeks ago shocking news began coming from South Sudan.   Some worry that a civil war is possible.

Tonight we had a few South Sudanese in our home for dinner.   On my birthday, tomorrow I will preach from Psalm 147, an Exilic Psalm in a South Sudanese church.   Yet, our Sudanese brothers stopped this evening to bless our family's home.   It was humbling.  (ABA = Africa Blesses Again.)

Each year I ask for my friends and family to join in a prayer for a specific matter on my birthday.   On my 47th birthday I request you join in praying the Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi for South Sudan.
 

 

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is error, truth;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.