needs on Apathy

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

For the times when we fail to notice others’ needs, we repent. For our apathy for those you’ve entrusted to us, we repent. For the amount of time we spend focused on ourselves, we repent. For fa...

Gracious God, you call us to a life of intimate relationship with you and with one another. You call us to a life of community, where we actively seek the needs of others before our own. We acknowledg...

Call to Confession: The prophet asks the Lord’s people, “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap.” ...

You aren't alive if you aren't in need.

So we learn early on that lack is embarrassing. Our pain is uncomfortable not just for ourselves but for those around us. Our need is obscene and offensive to a world that prides itself on its self-re...

There is an invisible pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens it. And the more heightened the desire, the greater our satisfaction will ultimately be. It ...

O Lord, we are too easily discouraged when things don’t go our way, when we face trials, testings, and even persecution. Lord forgive the weakness of our faith. We too often respond in anger and hurtf...

God of mercy, we ignore the needs of people around us all too often. We get caught up in our own issues and forget that there are millions of people who struggle for basic necessities on a daily basis...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Although I witnessed the faithfulness of God to meet my basic needs, I used coping mechanisms to meet my immediate, personal needs.

When we allow darkness to overcome the light, forgive us, Lord. When we reduce Christmas to plastic and tinsel, have mercy on us, Father. When hardness of heart keeps us from seeing and hearing an...

Prayer of Adoration God, Almighty – holy, gracious, truthful and loving, we’re drawn by Your invitation to enjoy Your love, an invitation to feel Your touch and hear Your voice, to taste and see tha...

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...

There are two ways each of us can approach life: spending our days meeting our needs or looking for ways to meet others' needs. The mystery is that when we spend our life focused on our own needs,...

For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us...

The Greeks used to say that people in need are ambassadors of the gods.

Heavenly Father, we confess that we too often center our lives around ourselves and our immediate needs, and that this blinds us from being aware of the needs of our neighbors. Help us to know our tru...

All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him . . . He is able, He is able; He is willing; doubt no more.

You have taught us to be patient and promised to supply our needs, O God. Yet we grow weary of waiting and restless with our wants. We blame our troubles on brothers and sisters, withholding from them...

A Sound Foundation Acts 2:42 would make for a solid outline for a worship service, checklist for a congregation’s life together, or personal schedule for an afternoon. Most of what we are called to d...

A true prayer is an inventory of needs, a catalog of necessities, an exposure of secret wounds, a revelation of hidden poverty.

Desire is something no child has to be taught. Early in the developmental process, most of a child’s desires center around physical needs being met or objects that attract interest. If a child is secu...

This world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.

Holy Lord, High Priest over all people, You have given us everything we need to live a life of flourishing. You have met our needs and provided a model for what a life-with-God looks like. But we oft...

Heavenly Father, You and Your Gifts are Perfect. We are not. You lead us with abundant mercy, justice, and grace. We are slow to follow. We abandon the straight and narrow path of life in which You di...

One of the oldest human needs is to have someone to wonder where you are if you don’t come home at night.

As Europe plunged ever deeper into a second world war, the British poet W.H. Auden composed a poem (“September 1, 1939”) that peels back our human tendency to cover up all fear and uncertainty with se...

When we see how God is able to show his power in our weakness, not in spite of our weakness but because of it, we are no longer ashamed or afraid. When we see the expansive task at hand and instead of...

Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.