A PRAYER FOR OUR CITY
Loving God, you have set us in families and clans, in cities and neighbourhoods.
Our common life began in a garden, but our destiny lies in the city.
You have placed us in Coventry, a city of culture. This is our home.
Your creativity is on display here through the work of human hearts and hands.
We pray for Coventry today—for the East and West, North and South.
For Hillfields and Walsgrave, for Tile Hill and Coundon
We pray for our poorest neighbours and for powerful people in banks and offices in the high street. We pray for immigrants in temporary housing, for the homeless on the streets, for families in terraced homes, and students in high-rise apartments.
We pray for Coventry’s sisters: Leamington, Nuneaton, Rugby, Bedworth, Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon.
And for Birmingham and Leicester, Athens and Nairobi, New Delhi and Guangzhou —and a thousand other cities connected to our own.
In all our neighbourhoods and villages this day there will be crime and callous moneymaking; there will be powerful people unable or unwilling to see the vulnerable who are their neighbours.
There will also be beautiful acts of compassion and creativity in all these places; forgiveness and generosity; neighbours working together for a more just community.
Help us see this city as something other than a centre bounded by a ring road, the A45 and M6 – where our imaginations are limited by the time it takes to travel around or through, and by endless comparisons that stunt our natural creativity.
Show us a deeper reality, God: show us your playground, and invite us to play.
Like the city of your dreams, make this a city where those who were once poor enjoy the fruits of their labour;
A place where children are no longer doomed to misfortune, but play safely in the parks and paths under the watchful eyes of healthy old men and women;
A place where former rivals and natural enemies work and play together in peace; a place where plastic is recycled, and air is unpolluted;
where trees and wildlife enrich our urban environment, and where all people enjoy communion with you.
We pray in the name of the one who wept over the city.
Amen.
The community at Mile High Ministries in Denver, Colorado, has written a beautiful prayer adapted from Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People that we would like to share. We invite you to use place names specific to your location and read responsively in a group, though it may also be prayed alone. No matter the setting, allow the ground of silence to hold these sacred words until they birth compassionate action in the world.