Posted by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is killing his own people. There are estimates that as many as 2000 protesters on the streets have lost their lives. Mercenaries with machine guns are shooting down people at random.
And so we pray this news with two poems:
The first is "Prayer for a New World" by Rafael Bordao from Prayers for a Thousand Years by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, is our prayer for Muammar Gaddafi.
Let us pray for those who ruin innocence
with reckless velocity.
Let us pray
for those who get stuck
in bitterness
and throw punches that bruise.
Let us pray
for those who will not be happy
and will not become what they hoped to be.
Let us pray
for him who flees from himself
and loses himself in this sordid world
where residue gravitates
and is hurled into the fright of the streets.
Our second prayer, for those seeking freedom and a changed regime in Libya, is "Touch Our World" from Shirley Erma Murray in Women of Prayer compiled by Dorothy Stewart.
God of freedom, God of justice,
God whose love is as strong as death,
God who saw the dark of prison,
God who knew the price of faith:
touch our world of sad oppression
with your Spirit's healing breath.