global food crisis
Pray the News – August 11th, 2024
This week, for Pray the News, I was drawn to an article from the World Food Programme, the food assistance branch of the United Nations. Conflicts, economic shocks, climate extremes and soaring fertilizer prices have together created a food crisis of unprecedented proportions. About 309 million people in 71 countries face chronic hunger.
Seventy percent of the world’s hungry people live in areas afflicted by war and violence. Conflicts have forced people out of their homes, wiped out income sources, and wrecked countries’ economies. Climate extremes have caused significant crop failures, undermining people’s ability to feed themselves. Global fertilizer prices have risen faster than food prices, greatly affecting those on the margins of life.
The most affected areas in the world include the Central American Dry Corridor (from Mexico to Panama), Haiti, the Sahel (a 1.1 million square mile strip stretching across Africa, just south of the Sahara Desert), Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Horn of Africa, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Let’s pray for each hungry person, each one a beautiful bearer of the image of God, who is with them in their suffering. We will pray using an adaptation of an ancient Christian prayer penned by a first century bishop, Clement of Rome:
We beg you, Lord, to help and defend us.
Deliver the oppressed.
Pity the insignificant.
Raise the fallen.
Show yourself to the needy.
Heal the sick.
Bring back those of your people who have gone astray.
Feed the hungry, especially those affected by conflicts, economic shocks, climate extremes and soaring fertilizer prices.
Lift up the weak.
Take off the prisoners’ chains.
We lift up to you the hungry in every nation, including Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
May every nation come to know that you alone are God,
that Jesus is your Child, that we are your people,
the sheep that you pasture.
Amen.
