BOYCOTT ALABAMA'S STATE PARKS:
Stop Special (Deer) Hunting Seasons!
Creator God
you have given us
temporary lordship
of your beautiful creation;
to care in your name for
all the creatures of the earth;
and yet we have abused our power,
inflicted cruelty on other creatures
and marred your image in us.
You hear the cries of all your creatures;
those in the field and forest
who are abused for sport
and killed for our entertainment;
help us also to hear their cries,
to repent of our violence, and
by your renewing Spirit,
to live in peace with all
our fellow creatures.
Amen.
Liberating God
release us from that
spiritual poverty
that sees other creatures
only as commodites,
objects of sport
and reduces them to things
for our amusement.
Help us to feel compassion
for all living creatures,
so that, by your grace,
we may become
new creatures in Christ
alive with your Spirit.
Amen.
Holy Father
help us to see that there is
something profoundly
Christ-like about
the innocent
suffering of animals;
give us grace to feel
their pain
and so share
the burden of suffering
which lies
upon the world.
Most of all,
give us strength to
work against cruelty,
and for the protection
of all those creatures
hunted for sport.
We ask these prayers
through your Son, Jesus Christ
whose face is seen
in all the faces
of suffering
in our world.
Amen.
Merciful God
We are made in your image
But we have made gods of ourselves;
we have turned your creatures
into things and machines,
making them objects of our sport
using them for our vanity,
exploiting them through our greed
and stealing their lives;
But you are the Liberating God
who can transform even ourselves;
help us to turn from our evil
and embrace the vision
of your peaceable kingdom
where 'they shall not hurt
nor destroy in all your holy mountain'
so that 'the earth shall be full
of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea' (Isa. 11.9).
Amen
Oxford theologian
Oxford, England
Prayers are displayed, here, with written permission from the author.
