This past Saturday, the Pope asked his followers to pray for peace in Syria. Catholics were joined by other Christians and people of other faiths. On Monday, a seemingly off-the-cuff response by John Kerry led to a breakthrough. Skeptics about God and faith will tell you it was a coincidence.
But I'm not a skeptic.
I believe God answers prayers.
This admittedly makes me a seeming anomaly among western human rights activists, though I know several others who feel the same way. My faith has always been the motivating factor in my life and in my decision to pursue human rights.
It's with that that I've decided to make a commitment towards my two great loves in life: God and human rights. Every week, by Friday I'll pick a conflict or a human rights concern that I will highlight and write a small thing about and ask those of you who read my blog and have a faith orientation to pray about it on Saturday. I won't ask you to pray for specific policies, but I'll ask you to pray for situations.
Now, I will try to make this as open to other faiths as I possibly can, but let me be clear... I'm a Christian. That's all I am. And all I have to offer the world is myself. So I'll be writing in my own voice, from my own faith background and my blog posts will always end with a suggested prayer as I know some of my friends will want / need a little prompting at first on how to pray over situations, rather than people or things.
I'm posting this so if you want to join you can remember to check out my blog every Saturday morning.
This is admittedly going to be a challenge for me. I love human rights and I love prayer, but I also am swamped in my PhD and so I don't like making commitments that will take some level of creativity on a weekly basis (you can see how rarely I update this blog now). But, this is something I think is important and it's a small area I think I can make a contribution to.
So... look for my first prayer post before Saturday. I already know it will be about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process because it has been on my heart a lot today and in the past few weeks.
But I'm not a skeptic.
I believe God answers prayers.
This admittedly makes me a seeming anomaly among western human rights activists, though I know several others who feel the same way. My faith has always been the motivating factor in my life and in my decision to pursue human rights.
It's with that that I've decided to make a commitment towards my two great loves in life: God and human rights. Every week, by Friday I'll pick a conflict or a human rights concern that I will highlight and write a small thing about and ask those of you who read my blog and have a faith orientation to pray about it on Saturday. I won't ask you to pray for specific policies, but I'll ask you to pray for situations.
Now, I will try to make this as open to other faiths as I possibly can, but let me be clear... I'm a Christian. That's all I am. And all I have to offer the world is myself. So I'll be writing in my own voice, from my own faith background and my blog posts will always end with a suggested prayer as I know some of my friends will want / need a little prompting at first on how to pray over situations, rather than people or things.
I'm posting this so if you want to join you can remember to check out my blog every Saturday morning.
This is admittedly going to be a challenge for me. I love human rights and I love prayer, but I also am swamped in my PhD and so I don't like making commitments that will take some level of creativity on a weekly basis (you can see how rarely I update this blog now). But, this is something I think is important and it's a small area I think I can make a contribution to.
So... look for my first prayer post before Saturday. I already know it will be about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process because it has been on my heart a lot today and in the past few weeks.
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