EDINBURGH NORTHWEST KIRK
OCTOBER PRAYER DIARY
The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
Psalm 23 : 1
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Prayers for each day
1 Oct the Visiting Team Harvest Service today
2 Oct the Kirk Session meeting tonight
3 Oct the Moderator of the Church of Scotland
4 Oct the staff working in 121 George Street
5 Oct our joint communion service at Pennywell
6 Oct new members who joined Edinburgh North West Kirk yesterday.
7 Oct the CrossReach ministry at Eskmills, Edinburgh providing supported accommodation for adults with learning disabilities
8 Oct international efforts to securing the end of the war in Israel/Gaza
9 Oct aid agencies attempting to alleviate suffering in Gaza
10 Oct Emma Mcmillan in her studies
11 Oct Jessie Fubara-Manuel, our Pastoral Assistant
12 Oct our services at Cramond and Pennywell
13 Oct Edinburgh Street Pastors
14 Oct the ministry to young people
15 Oct for Julia and her family
16 Oct Hospital Chaplains in Edinburgh
17 Oct for the ministry of Fresh Start
18 Oct for the many enduring pain and suffering in Ukraine
19 Oct our services at Cramond and Pennywell
20 Oct for the recently bereaved
21 Oct for members of our community dealing with serious illness
22 Oct Open Doors: pray for Sudan.
23 Oct the CrossReach ministry of Queen’s Bay Lodge in Joppa. Pray for residents, staff and volunteers providing residential care to older people
24 Oct the King, Queen and royal family
25 Oct the First Minister and government
26 Oct our services at Cramond and Pennywell
27 Oct the Prime Minister and government
28 Oct for members of our community dealing with mental illness
29 Oct for the ministry of our local churches
30 Oct for the ministry of hospices in Edinburgh
31 Oct the ministry of Christian Aid worldwide
Reflection York Minster - Service of Reflection and Remembrance to mark the 80th Anniversary of the End of the Second World War : 06/09/2025
Archbishop Stephen Cottrell
Today, we give thanks for those whose sacrifice brought peace to the warring tribes, ideologies and nations of the world in those convulsive events that tipped the world over into warfare, chaos and horror and where so many suffered, and ended 80 years ago this year; but we also must reflect - and please note we call this service today a service of reflection as well as remembrance – that it was the absolute horror of atomic bombs falling on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which brought this conflict to an end, ushering in both an end to war and a new era of Cold War, a different kind of division in the world, and a gripping fear of total annihilation which persists today, where even more nations spend vast amounts of money, either maintaining colossal arsenals of nuclear weapons, or wanting themselves to develop them and sit at the nuclear high table. This is what we live with each day. It is not yet - not nearly yet - the peace the scriptures speak of, nor the peace that young men and women fought and died for. Nor is it the peace which I suspect so many of us long for here today. War is always a horror. Soldiers know this better than anyone. It should always be a last resort. The causes we fought for as a country between 1939 and 1945 were just and good. But there is, oh, so much more work for us to do, and I believe it is in doing this, the work of making peace, that we best remember and honour the sacrifice of those whose lives were lost. My uncle fought in Burma. It scarred him for life. He never spoke about what he had seen and experienced. Such is the traumatising legacy of war for those who come home. Such was the brutality of that campaign. For those who died, their whole future was taken from them. Loved ones spent a lifetime grieving and wondering what might have been. There are times when wickedness and oppression must be confronted by force. This was one of them. But we must also walk the second mile of love to do all that we can to prevent such conflict and oppose the dividing ideologies, the inequalities of wealth, opportunity and power that fuel the conflicts of the world. And we say this knowing that the conflict in Ukraine continues. That the situation in Gaza worsens. That other conflicts and persecutions across the world fester and persist. That climate change alone fuels dis-ease, rolls over into conflict and accelerates the mass movement of peoples which itself causes yet more conflict and unrest. We need a different vision for how we must live together on this earth. It is the reason people fought and died. It is the thing we must constantly reflect upon and pray for. It is why Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5. 9).
Not just those who love peace or long for peace, but those who will endeavour to do something about it by loving their neighbour and by recognising our common humanity, and by seeking solutions for the challenges of the world that bring us together. The beatitudes, of which this is just one, says that when you are a peacemaker you are “a child of God”, which I suppose means someone who is most like God, who inherits and exhibits the qualities of God; who is like Jesus. But there are seven other beatitudes as well and we must take them all to heart. We need to be people who are poor in spirit, which means rich in the mercy and goodness of God. We need to mourn and lament, crying out that this is not how the world is meant to be, and that it could be different, because we are people who hunger and thirst for what is right. We need to be merciful, because we know we get things wrong, and we know that we need mercy ourselves. And, finally, because we try to do these things, because we dare to believe that it is possible to live differently and that peace is possible, the final beatitude reminds us that we will face opposition, that we may even be persecuted because we dare to take our stand upon these things we see in and receive from Christ himself. So, today we are doing several things. First, we are, indeed, remembering those whose lives were lost, giving thanks for those who made this ultimate sacrifice. And we remember those who suffered so much as a consequence of war, particularly remembering those who suffered and still suffer because of what happened in the Far East campaigns and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and praying for a world that can, one day, be free of such weapons of mass destruction. And we remember that making peace is not something for just some people to be concerned with. We are all called to commit ourselves to peace each day and be part of God’s movement for peace which is shown to us in Jesus Christ and taught us in the gospel. The generation who fought and lived through the Second World War knew this. Every person played their part. We thank them and esteem them. But they now pass the torch to us. Will we be peacemakers too, loving our neighbour and thirsting for peace and justice? If we rise to this challenge – and it is what our world so urgently needs - then we will, dear sisters and brothers, be children of God. And we will bequeath to our children a peace that the world on its own can never give.
If you have a prayer request or a favourite prayer which you would care to share in a future Prayer Diary, please e-mail office@cramondkirk.org.uk