• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Joint Public Issues Team

Churches working for peace and justice

  • Home Page
  • Who We Are
    • Six hopes for society
  • Issues
    • Economy
      • Tax Justice
      • Reset The Debt
      • Living Wage
    • Environment
      • Net Zero In My Neighbourhood
    • Poverty and Inequality
      • The Cost of Living Crisis
      • Universal Credit
      • Truth and Lies
      • Enough
      • Rethink Sanctions
      • Faith in Foodbanks
      • Housing and Homelessness
    • Asylum and Migration
      • Refugees
      • End Hostility
      • The Asylum System
    • Peacemaking
      • The Arms Trade
      • Nuclear Weapons
      • Drones
      • Peacemaking resources
    • Politics and Elections
      • Elections
      • Meet Your MP
      • Art of the Possible
      • Brexit
    • Other Issues
      • International Development
      • Modern Slavery and Exploitation
        • Forced labour in fashion
  • Get Involved
    • JPIT Conference 2022
    • Newsletter
    • Events
    • Walking with Micah
  • Resources
    • Advent
    • 10 Minutes on… podcast
    • Politics in the Pulpit?
    • Stay and Pray
    • Season of Creation
    • Prayers
    • Public Issues Calendar
    • Poetry
    • Small Group Resources
  • Blog

Je suis – Prayer Update January 2015

Blog, Prayers · 28 January, 2015

“Je suis Charlie” – until a few weeks ago, it was a phrase that people would have struggled to understand, yet the recent attacks in Paris and the world’s response to them have turned it into a global expression of solidarity. For people of faith, it is a phrase we may well have mixed feelings about- being uncomfortable with the degree of satire that publications like Charlie Hebdo level against certain religious beliefs, but nonetheless wanting to stand with those who would defend liberty.

Je suis simply means I am, and has come to express a welter of human responses:

I am with those who have lost loved ones and express my condolences and dismay at the circumstances in which their lives were taken.

I am one with those who abhor violence and murder, particularly when it is pursued in the name of religion

I am part of the struggle to know how to defend freedom and yet also live alongside and with respect for those whose beliefs and sensibilities are not the same as mine.

I am a free citizen, yet recognise that this cannot be preserved without respecting the freedom of those with whom I may not agree.

There are no easy answers to the questions that recent events raise, or indeed the underlying tensions and issues that give rise to them. Many Christians have not been slow in pointing out that while the world was rightly outraged by the events that took place on the streets of Paris, at the same time, the massacre of significant numbers of civilians in northern Nigeria went almost unnoticed. This is a further sign of our fractured and troubled world.
Yet as the world repeated and re-tweeted the phrase “I am”, Christian believers were quietly reminded that this is the name by which God first described himself when calling Moses to become the leader of his people (Exodus 3:14). Albeit largely unintended, this name has been re-stated again and again. “Je suis” expresses both our human inadequacy and God’s all-encompassing response – in the midst of our dismay and concern he simply, yet profoundly declares “I AM”.


Prayer

Ever present God
Sustain us with the reality of that truth,
Write it deep within our being
That we might view every situation in its light

When we struggle to make sense,
Of the circumstances that prevail,
You are there.

When it feels that life is dominated,
By the demands and expectations of others,
You are there.

When we prefer to forget,
And act as if it were not so,
You are there.

And when we turn again to the ways of your Kingdom
And cast ourselves afresh on your mercy.
You are there.

God with us
Born among us
Always there
Amen

God of every situation and circumstance
We hold before you the needs and struggles
Of our hurting and fractured world

Be with us in the anger, the pain and confusion
Of our responses to what is happening around us
And help us to hear you speaking even in its midst

Pour out your peace
Pour out your healing
Pour out your wisdom

Restrain those who are intent on evil
Give resolve to those who must bear its brunt
And help us to seek your Kingdom
Above every human interest

Through Christ our Lord
Amen

Filed Under: Blog, Prayers

Previous Post: « UK Government announces attendance at Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons Conference in Vienna
Next Post: #rethinksanctions: How I lost my income for a month »

Primary Sidebar

Search

Recent Posts

  • JPIT’s Review of 2022
  • What does Government Support for Asylum Seekers really provide?
  • God with Us – the Refugees of Calais and Dunkirk
  • How can we respond to COP27?
  • Statement on the conclusion of the COP27 Climate Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
  • COP27 – what should we be looking for?
  • “He has filled the hungry with good things” – What we need from the Autumn Budget
  • What are the stories we should tell about the humanitarian crisis at Manston Airport Asylum centre?
  • How can we be sure that the products we buy are not the result of modern slavery?
  • Why I hate Warm Banks (and why my church is opening one)
  • How does our theology call us to challenge Poverty?
  • Introducing Alfie
  • Biden says nuclear risk is the highest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
  • Churches respond to risk to benefit levels
  • Briefing on the ‘Mini Budget’ for the Enough to Live group
  • Introducing Hazel
  • Introducing Hannah
  • An energy cap announcement in three parts: the good, the absent and the ugly
  • Afghanistan and the UK – One Year On from the Fall Of Kabul
  • Inflation, interest rates and the poorest

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Footer

Follow us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Quick links

Stay and Pray
Politics in the Pulpit
Faith in Politics podcast
Public Issues Calendar
Useful Links

Our work

About Us
Meet the Team
Join the Team 
Internship
Our Newsletter

Contact us

25 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5JR

Tel: 020 7916 8632

enquiries@jpit.uk

Copyright © 2023 · Showcase Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in