current affairs and causes on HIV/AIDS

Lord God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: we hear your Word and sing your praises. We meet at the Table and partake of your Sacrament–the gospel made visible. You call us to yourself, and you send us out ...

We thank you, God our Father, that by your grace, mercy and love, expressed today in Word and Sacrament, You give us Your Son, the true bread from heaven and the fountain of living water. Strengthen u...

Lord Jesus–You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your advent every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumblin...

Thank You, Lord, for the gifts of life, of love and of care that come from You, wrapped in our moms and step-moms, in our grand-moms, great-grandmas, daughters, sisters, and aunts. We’re grateful for...

Depression is one of the greatest killers of our time. It affects 50 million Americans at some point in their lives and has increased 400 percent since 1987. Depression is associated with suicide, div...

Holy and Merciful God, We acknowledge that this crisis has exposed our idols. We accept that we have placed our trust and hope in stability, in consistency, and technology. And now, as we recognize o...

Relay For Life is an international, community-based fundraising event for the American Cancer Society and many other Cancer related institutions, societies and associations.  Merciful God, we than...

More than any other segment of the population, white evangelical Christians demonstrate a blindness to the struggle of their African American brothers and sisters….This is a dangerous reality for the ...

Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so man...

Gracious God, We come before you today scared. Scared for our health, scared for our jobs, scared for our loved ones. Help us Lord, not to dwell in our fears, but rather to turn to you, trusting that...

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.

To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment...

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for y...

Holy God, We recognize that when crisis strikes, the natural impulse is to turn inward, to take care of ourselves above our neighbors. We hoard the essentials we think will keep us safe, even if that...

Consider the following summary of an interview conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of the world’s leading researchers on poverty: In a village in Indonesia we met Ibu Emptat, the wif...

The ways that social structures and institutions systematically work against the interest of people of color is called institutional racism. Institutional racism and historic racism are not unrelated ...

Did you know that apartheid in South Africa was based in large part on theological doctrines that were formed at Stellenbosch University in the 1930s and 1940s? Isn’t that chilling? Many of the intell...

An individual doesn’t get cancer, a family does.

Poverty is the absence of linkages, the absence of connections with others.

A missionary friend of mine once said, ‘Things were simple before I went to Africa. I knew what the African’s problem was, and I knew the answer. When I got there and began to know him as a person, th...

Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have non...

Look with pity, O heavenly Father, upon the people in this land who live with injustice, terror, disease, and death as their constant companions. Have mercy upon us. Help us to eliminate our cruelty t...

We are handicapped in the white church. If I preached Jesus’ first sermon (Luke 4:14–30) and gave it the social emphasis that He gave, our church has no vehicle for doing anything about the problem. P...

Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.

Hating skin color is contempt for God's divine creative imagination. Honoring it is appreciation for conscious, beautiful-love-inspired diversity.

Which is mostly how mental illness works. You don’t know you have it until it’s all up in your grill trying to destroy your life. This happens, most often, because getting honest with ourselves about ...

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the ...

Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...

In his excellent book, Just Courage , founder and CEO of the International Justice Mission, Gary Haugen articulates some of the realities behind the systemic oppression of the poor around the world...

In this beautiful illustration from Tom Long’s well-known preaching guide, The Witness of Preaching , a pastor shares a true story of what valuing human life can look like when God’s Kingdom takes ro...