A Remembrance Day Message from Rev. Maya Landell

Dear Friends,

This is a photo of a chaplain praying over a soldier. Today I am grateful for all the chaplains who serve, not bearing arms, but bearing love and God’s presence for those who serve and their families. Let us pray:

Gracious God, our helps in ages past, our hope for years to come, in memory and in hope, we come before you.

We bless you for your presence with us in our greatest joy and our most crushing sorrow. We thank you for love and life; for friends and family. Bless our remembering, O God.

We offer prayers of thankfulness and care for those who have gone before us, those who died that we might live, who suffered and still suffer in defense of the dignity of all people.

We remember those who have struggled for peace, stood against evil, sought justice with the sacrifice of their blood and their bodies their minds, their futures their lives, in the great European wars, in wars in Asia, the middle east, eastern Europe, southern Africa, Latin America – wherever the human struggle for justice and hope has been fought with pain and sacrifice. And we remember that many throughout your world still live where war and terror, violence and injustice are part of daily life.

We remember those we do not know: children, men, women and all your creatures whose eyes have seen the darkness of war. We ask your presence with them in struggles for justice and peace, and with us as we try to discern how best to assist them. For the healing of the nations, O God we pray

In memory of those who died in war, and in the firm and fervent hope of a just and lasting peace for all people, we ask that you pour your gift of healing grace upon us.
Comfort and strengthen those who suffer from oppression and natural disaster, from hunger and isolation, from illness and sorrow.

And keep us all ever mindful of the peace that is more than the absence of war
The peace that is the presence of compassion and understanding,
Faith and hope, justice and love, throughout all creation.

Help us to build a world that has no room for hatred, no place for violence, a world in which love can live. We gather these and all our prayers, thankful that we may turn to you as to a mother watching over us, as

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen.