Gracious God...Surround Haiti and her people with your loving embrace

From a prayer service for Haiti, Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (Washington National Cathedral), January 17, 2010:

Gracious God,
I lift my voice in prayer with all the people of the world.

Surround Haiti and her people
with your loving embrace
that they may be:

supported by the world in the work of rescue and recovery;
comforted as they grieve;
strengthened as they bury their dead;
healed as they tend their wounds;
restored in faith and the
hope of things unseen;
and transformed through newness of life in Christ.

Make me an instrument
of divine love, of mercy, of hope, and of new possibility.
Give me eyes to see,
ears to hear, the will to act, and a discerning and generous heart
that I may serve you and those who suffer in whatever way I am able.

In and through the power of the Holy Spirit, I pray. Amen.

It's time to show solidarity with our Haitian neighbors. Haiti will need help for a long time.

Partners in Health is the NGO founded in Haiti in 1987 by Dr. Paul Farmer, the celebrated physician and anthropologist who focuses on international social justice. The group’s emergency response focuses on delivering medical supplies and staff. Donate here.

You can donate to UNICEF for aid to children.

There is Doctors Without Borders.

Action Against Hunger has long been involved in Haiti.

Mercy Corps is an NGO that specializes in emergency disaster relief and is deployed in Haiti.

If you want to help Haiti, and other developing nations over the long term, there is debt relief.

Contact Jubilee USA for how you can help.

The Haitian Embassy urges you to consider donating cash as opposed to in-kind donations. Visit the Haitian Embassy’s website .

For those who wish to donate through the Episcopal Church...

... there are the relief efforts of Episcopal Relief and Development.

The Episcopal Sisters of Saint Margaret are there in Haiti and are doing what they can to help out their neighbors despite their own losses and suffering.

COURAGE IN WORD AND DEED

Daily Reading for January 19 • The Confession of St. Peter the Apostle and a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gracious, loving, and compassionate God of our fathers and mothers, we give you thanks for your faithful servants in every age who have struggled against injustice and oppression and who have fought to root out the evil and sin of racism and discrimination. Through witnesses such as Harriet Tubman, Absalom Jones, and Martin Luther King, Jr., we have learned the merits of self-sacrifice, courageous action, and redemptive suffering. Grant that we in this day, following their example, may continue to resist oppression in all its forms and guises. May we resolve to remain committed to do the work to which you have called each of us and which you require of us all—to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly” with you, our God. Trusting in your grace and mercy, and in the power of your holy enabling and sustaining Spirit, we ask this in the name of our Liberator, your Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

A prayer by Bishop Barbara C. Harris, quoted in Race and Prayer: Collected Voices, Many Dreams, edited by Malcolm Boyd and Chester Talton. Copyright © 2003.

Thanks to Episcopal Café's Speaking to the Soul.