HOW IS YOUR CONGREGATION PRAYING FOR PALESTINE?

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2025

Palestinians are being bombed, shot, poisoned, and starved to death by Israel. U.S. media outlets are strangely silent about it. One seldom sees, hears, or reads news coverage about Israel’s aggression against Palestinians. But the most unsettling silence is from U.S. religious congregations. Despite daily news reports from non-U.S. media outlets Palestinians are dying every day from Israeli military actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, most U.S. religious bodies are not protesting Israeli aggression.

I suspect that they also are not praying about it. They are not praying for the unsheltered, starving, defenseless, and occupation-weary Palestinians in Gaza.

They are not praying even though a panel of United Nations experts estimates that 500,000 people are starving in Gaza (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/12/famine-stalking-across-gaza-500000-face-starvation-analysis).

They are not praying as men, women, and children are being slaughtered with U.S. weapons by a regime addicted to zionism, bigotry against Arabs, settler colonialism, apartheid, and extermination of Palestinians.

They are not praying about the military weapons, ammunition, and other resources given to Israel by the United States, so that Israel can continue killing Palestinians and stealing their land, water, and other resources.

They are not praying about U.S. politicians who brag about their support for Israel even though that support means death for Palestinians.

Our congregation, New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, is different. Since January 2024, New Millennium has regularly included a prayer for Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem before ending Sunday worship services. That prayer might be likened to a psalm of lament. It is projected on a monitor where congregants of all ages – yes, including children – can see and read it.

Here is our prayer.

A PRAYER FOR JUSTICE CONCERNING GAZA, THE WEST BANK, AND EAST JERUSALEM

December 28, 2023

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2023

 

To the One who gives all life, God of Creation, Love, Justice, Hope, Peace, Truth, and Vindication, hear this prayer for your children in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Hear our prayers for the infants of Palestine.

Hear our prayers for their parents.

Hear our prayer for the playmates children in Gaza will never know.

Hear our prayer.

 

See the silent and sobbing tears we weep for the futures they will never experience. 

Smiles. Laughter. Giggles.

All lost.

 

Bombed.

Incinerated.

Targeted.

Massacred.

The slaughtered children, parents, and elders cannot plead for help.

The nations of the world will not protect them.

Religious leaders across the world do not cry out for them.

Politicians in Israel, the United States, and their allies calculate how to take advantage of them, discount them, and subsidize, arm, and cover for Israel.

Israeli Defense Forces collectively punish them, occupy them, displace them, massacre them, and abuse them.

O God of life, love, truth, and justice, judge the hands that are murdering your children.

Judge the politics of hate, bigotry, deceit, hypocrisy, and fear masquerading under disguises while dealing in death-dealing, settler colonizing, land stealing, and white supremacist lies.

Security for Israel. Lies.

Self-defense. Lies.

Israel is the one true democracy in the Middle East. Lies.

Judge the perpetrators and sycophants of apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, white supremacy, Zionist-minded racism, Islamophobia, Christian Zionism, imperial fascism, and xenophobia.

Judge those who deprive your Palestinian children food, clean water, safe shelter, sanitation, medical care, and protection from their enemies.

Take notice of those who bomb hospitals, churches, mosques, schools, refugee camps, and life support systems.

Judge the snipers who murder women and children while they leave places of prayer, praise, refuge, and reflection.

O God of truth, justice, and vindication, avenge them in your name.

Avenge the massacred people in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Avenge the displaced.

Avenge the tortured.

Avenge the detained.

Avenge the persecuted, hunted, and murdered journalists .

Deliver fierce judgment against the murderers, land thieves, slanderers, and enemies of your Palestinian children.

Judge the people who perpetrate their genocide, displacement, and sufferings.

Judge the people who put more value on corporate profits than child protection.

Avenge your children, God.

Vindicate their rights to live, grow, learn, love, and heal the world.

Hear their deadened voices.

Avenge your Palestinian children, please God.

As God of justice, for their sake do not hold back your wrath against their oppressors.

Bring judgment against those who treat your children in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem as worthless.

Disposable.

Expendable.

Forgettable.

Unprotected.

Defenseless.

Avenge your Palestinian children, God.

Comfort them by your acts of vengeance. 

We appeal to your exclusive right to avenge the deaths, land theft, and other suffering of our Palestinian siblings.

Make us your co-workers for justice against those who oppress and slaughter your children in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Loosen our tongues to loudly declare your judgment on all involved in the oppression of Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Strengthen us to defend and support the Palestinian resistance to that oppression.

Guide us to help their fight for freedom, independence, self-determination, and equality.

Teach us how to speak your truth, hope, and work for justice.

Rise up, O God, in power.

Vindicate the people of Gaza, the Israeli occupied West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Rise, O God! Rise! 

Would your congregation join this prayer? Why not?

Why not pray that God act to vindicate the suffering Palestinian people?

Why not pray that God hold nations, politicians, and war profiteers accountable for what is plainly wicked?

Why not pray that God teach us, guide us, and strengthen us to demand and work for justice for Palestinians who are being exterminated so their land can be stolen in a zionist quest for empire?

And if your congregation is not praying this prayer, how is it praying differently about what the world knows is happening in Palestine?